


Met at MIT

by illhaveapepperonytogoplease



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, College Tony Stark is even worse, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Mush, It got smutty, Might get smutty, Oral Sex, Sex, Slow Burn, They’re two dorks in love okay, Tony Stark Does What He Wants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-05-18 16:42:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 47,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19338481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illhaveapepperonytogoplease/pseuds/illhaveapepperonytogoplease
Summary: Pepperony College AU; Pepper Potts is an 18 year old business major and Tony Stark is a 20 year old genius already doing his postgraduate work, they just happen to become partners in a class neither wanted to take





	1. Chapter 1

“So Potts, _do_ the curtains match the drapes?” Tony asks, that smug smirk on his face as they sit across from each other in the library. He laughs when she throws a highlighter at him, the little yellow stick bouncing off his forehead to land flat in front of him, rolling on his empty notebook before coming to a stop. “I’ll take that as a yes?”

“Take that as a ‘you’ll never find out,’ Tony,” she says smartly, giving him her best glare, which only seems to encourage him.

“Oh, so it’s a no?” He leans forward on a closed fist, eyeing her suggestively. “What are you, then? Blonde? There’s no shame in being blonde, you know, I have a thing for them, too, but-”

“You know what _I_ have a thing for, Stark?” She asks, putting her pencil down. “Guys who can last five minutes without making some sexual innuendo or degrading remark.”

“You’re with _Killian_ , of course you have a thing for guys who can only last five minutes,” he quips, jumping slightly when she picks up her pencil and points it at him threateningly. “Too far?” He asks lightly, that innocent boyish grin making it impossible for her to stay angry with him.

“You went too far about ten minutes ago,” she snaps, referring to the fact that-in the midst of an educated conversation about different economic theories-he’d asked her if she likes getting her hair pulled during sex.

Everything about the man-kid, really-was infuriating.

She’d met Tony Stark, the forever-hungover twenty year old genius who already had doubled majored at MIT by the time she entered a year early at seventeen, in their world economics class when Professor Grogan assigned them as partners for the year long project that would count as their final. Since then, between late night study sessions and what felt like a constant babysitting gig, she’d been dodging his come-ons and sly touches. And when he found out, about two weeks into their...acquaintanceship or whatever one would call the odd relationship they shared, that she was dating Aldrich Killian, everything was made only so much worse.

Killian and Stark were as close to nemeses as you could get in college; both entered on full rides way too young for their own good and both thought they were the most intelligent men to ever walk the earth. In fact, when Tony found out his freshman year that there was _another_ fourteen year old kid who was taking the same Genius Kid Two Years To Get a Bachelors Program as him, he had double majored in mechanical engineering and biological sciences out of pure spite.

“It was a genuine question, Pepper,” he says defensively. “I’m trying to see what you like.”

“It is none of your concern what I like.”

“You _do_ , don’t you?” He asks scandalously, a devilish grin appearing on his lips as he points a finger at her. “I knew it. You’re too...put together to not have a kinky side. Gotta release all that tension somehow.”

“ _What_ does-”

“And Killian? What’s he like?”

“Why are you so obsessed with-”

“I just can’t imagine being with a guy named _Aldrich_ -I mean, moaning _that_ name?”

“Well, the fact that you imagine being with a guy at all suggests to me your very public sex life is just out there to cover something up,” she responds dryly, having long become numb to his dirty remarks about her and Killian.

“Oh please, Potts, give me a minute between those sexy legs of yours and you’ll never doubt a single thing about me,” he says, sounding so incredibly serious that she sits back in her chair a bit, not liking how close they were. They did that sometimes-a lot of times, actually-get so close that they were breathing the same air and ignoring all concepts of personal space.

“What a shame,” she glances down at her watch with mock-disappointment, “I don’t seem to have a minute to spare today.”

“You will at some point,” he says, sounding so sure of himself that she wants to slap him.

“Maybe the same day you do your share of the work in Grogan’s class,” she responds, leaning forward to pick her highlighter off his notebook, Tony grabbing her hand. “Let go of me.”

“I like the view,” he teases and she realizes that with her arm out, he can see right down her blouse. “Black lace? I always thought you were more of a...hotrod red type,” he meets her eyes before glancing up, taking his time, showing absolutely no remorse at all in the fact that he’s so blatantly checking her out. “Or does that clash with the hair?” Pepper doesn’t even know where to begin with that; him looking down her top, judging her for her bra choice, telling her that he imagines her in different colored lingerie, and then asking if it all is chosen to match her hair-the man’s impossible. “Oh my God, is that a _hickey_?” He asks with childlike glee, his other hand pulling the collar of her top out of the way, eyeing what is most definitely a bruise right above her breast.

“Tony-” she begins, pulling back from him, smacking his hand away.

“That looks new, was-that’s why you were late today, huh?” He asks, his eyes dark as he looks at her. “Had to get a quickie in with Killian before you came here? Or-”

“If you don’t stop talking _right now_ ,” she threatens, “I will throw this book at you.”

“Is that why you’re so snippy? He didn’t get you off?” His voice is low and he’s looking at her too intensely-she has to look away.

“I’m _snippy_ because you’re a pig,” she spits, closing her notebook, getting ready to go.

Tony looks at her with that handsome, arrogant grin, raising his shoulder in a shrug as he winks at her coyly. “ _Oink_.”

“I’m leaving,” she says, standing with her books in her arms.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” he says, hands up in surrender, finally seeming to get that he’s really getting under her skin-and no longer in the playful, bantering way he often does. “No more mentions of Killian-or that hickey-I promise-really, I’ll be good. Truce?” He offers his hand in a sign of peace and when she’s actually dumb enough to take it, he pulls her forward so that they’re close enough that she can see every shade of brown in his dark eyes. He inches closer and her heart pounds in her chest because it really seems like he’s going to kiss her but at the last possible second, he turns slightly so that his lips land on her cheek instead. “Thanks, Pep.”

She can’t tell if she’s relieved or disappointed.

“So, let's get back to the debate-Taiwan: is it independent or a part of China?” He asks as if nothing happened, letting go of her and sitting back in his chair nonchalantly. “I say they’re independent; they don’t pay taxes to China’s communist government, they have their own government and economic system, and-”

“I agree with you, but you have to be prepared for the opposition's argument that China’s constitution-”

“Our constitution said ‘We the People’ when it meant ‘We the White, Land-Owning Men’-those documents are just…” he makes a flippant motion with his hand “ideals-symbols of a nation.”

“That’s a fallacy,” she says, sitting down across from him. “You can’t just redefine concepts and use misleading metaphors when someone presents you with a valid counterargument.”

“Got me this far,” he shrugs, playing with a pen he’d brought but not clicked once.

“There’s-” she cuts herself off, not wanting to make another snarky remark to restart their entire argument “-that’s irrelevant.”

“No what’s _irrelevant_ is the fact that China’s constitution somehow makes Taiwan a part of its country. It is a sovereign, self-governing, economically independent, autonomous nation that happens to have its relations very closely intertwined in China-that is all,” he says, obviously frustrated. “If it walks and talks like a country, it’s a country.”

“Well if you apply that logic to everything-”

“I do apply logic to everything, Pepper-that’s why I hate this damn class. Math and science, they’re black and white, but the world is just...grey,” he grins cheekily at her through his exasperation, adding, “And your hair is red.”

“How poetic, Tony, really.” She rolls her eyes with passion. “Now that we’ve established you’re colorblind and my hair is red, get back to the issue; saying Taiwan is independent because _you_ don’t think the Chinese constitution is relevant is hardly an adequate-”

“Do you always talk like this?” He asks, making her stop, looking at him confused. “This-this ‘hardly an adequate/now that we’ve established’ eighteenth century poet bullshit-do you-” he laughs at something he’s thinking of before, in a horrible high-pitched impersonation of her, begins, “Aldy, darling, are you well aware of the possible repercussions of engaging in coitus prior to obtaining a marriage license in-”

“Tony-” she points a finger at him “-one more remark about me or any of my relationships and I’m out of here.”

“Yes _ma’am_ ,” he mock salutes. “How’s all this Taiwan stuff relevant to the paper, again?”

“Does a nation need to have a uniform economic system to be functional, Tony?” He gives her a blank look and she sighs, “In other words, is China a country that allows for some capitalism within its socialistic economic system, or is it and Taiwan two separate entities?”

“Two separate entities,” he quotes, his lips barely quirking in a smirk. “It's a shame you’re not going to be a lawyer, Potts.”

“It’s a shame I’m having to do this project with you, Stark,” she responds flatly as she begins writing down notes about their main argument points for the essay.

“You’re the one choosing to do _all_ the work with me, we just have the final together-which I could easily knock out and pass the class with one week before it’s due.”

“ _Excuse me_?” She says, voice rising in disbelief. “I think it was _you_ who said you were failing first semester and wanted a partner for the midterm assignment.”

“You could’ve said no.”

“I’m not an asshole.”

“Ooh, dirty word, Pep, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you cuss before. How’d it feel? _Bad_? Exhilarating? The-”

“Shut up, Tony,” she says, tempted to throw her pen at him again. “You-”

“Virginia!” She hears Aldrich’s voice across the library and looks up in shock, not expecting to see him again today. “There you are, honey, I was looking all over the place for you.”

“Well now that you, and anyone who has ears within a five mile radius, knows where she is, you can leave,” Tony says sweetly, giving him a little wave.

“I’m sorry, isn’t there a liquor bottle out there with your name on it, Stark?” Aldrich answers, now at their table, looking down at Pepper.

“Oh, you’re funny,” Tony hits his knee humorlessly. “Really, Potts, how can you stand being around someone so _funny_?”

“Would you two stop?” She glares at both of them, giving Tony an almost pleading please-behave look, before turning to Aldrich. “What do you-I thought you had plans tonight?”

“I did but…” he trails off, giving Tony a smug smirk as he takes Pepper’s hand, “I changed them-I wanted to be with you instead.”

“Listen, as much as I’m _loving_ the Shakespeare, Killian, really-have you been studying literature? you should, a man with your lack of talents-we have a paper we need to write,” Tony motions between him and Pepper. “So, hello, thanks for stopping by, but-”

“Ginny,” Aldrich starts, giving her a look that seemed more fatherly than boyfriend like. “Come on, let’s go.”

“I-”

“Paper. Due date. Work,” Tony says, giving her an odd look as he watches her with her boyfriend. For as much as he teased and tormented her about Killian, he didn’t often see them together up close and personal.

“Boyfriend. Dinner. Date,” Aldrich mocks Tony's tone and Pepper watches as both size each other up, weighs her options quickly, and decides to get out of there-Tony could always go find something, or someone, to do, but she’s stuck with Killian.

“Okay, I’m coming,” she smiles at Aldrich, who gives Tony the most unbelievably triumphant look. “Don’t even look at each other, guys, it’s embarrassing.”

“Eyes are on you, baby, don’t worry,” Aldrich assures with a flirty wink, his hand finding the small of her back as she gets up from the table, giving Tony a “goodbye” and a pat on the shoulder, her manicured fingers lingering for a second on his soft shirt.

Killian picks her books up for her and as they walk out, she glances back at Tony, her heart panging at the sight of him sitting by himself.

If she didn’t already know that Tony Stark was incapable of feeling any emotions other than arrogance and lust, she might’ve said he looked lonely-or even sad-lounging back in his chair, all alone at their table in the large, dim library.


	2. Chapter 2

Tony groans to himself as he downs his third glass of scotch, looking around the Winter Formal, wondering how long he needed to stay for appearances sake before he could leave for an after party. 

It’s too uptight here- _formal_ was overstressed-and their professors were lingering with businessmen and women who had been brought in to mingle with MIT students, in hopes of making new connections.

He didn’t need connections-he _is_ the connection. 

He is motherfucking Anthony Edward Stark. 

He stifles the urge to shove away the little nerdy kid he knows from his world economics class who’s yammering on about world peace or something-he doesn’t even really know the person's name, Bill or Phil or Will Coulson-in an effort to get him interested in the mouthful of a student organization he was running. It already had quite a few dorks from around campus in it and the last thing Tony wanted to do was join a club that already had Steve Rogers _and_ Bruce Banner in it-he could only stand one of those morons at a time, he couldn’t handle being tag teamed by them. The only perk to joining the group would be because Pepper's dropdead gorgeous, curvy, redhead roommate Natalie Rushman was a part of it-and some good eyecandy made anything bearable. Happy Hogan-an older friend of his who'd taken him under his wing when he started at MIT at fourteen-had been trying to convince him to get involved in a group like Coulson's because he claimed it was good publicity or something for Stark Industries and his roommate, James Rhodes, had promised to also become a member if Tony ever joined but  _honestly_ , he didn't feel it was necessary.

Suddenly, through a break in the crowd, he gets a glance of a bare back encased in dark blue silk, the feminine, enticing curve of it making him stare at the woman like a teenager seeing boobs for the first time. His eyes trail up from the round swell of the girl’s-definitely a _girl,_ not some Wall Street business woman MIT had flown in for the event-ass, wondering what it'd be like to like to run his tongue up the length of her spine, and his breath gets caught in his throat when he sees strawberry blonde hair and Pepper’s very familiar side profile. 

Where the hell had she been hiding _that_ body?

She’s laughing, her curled hair shaking on her shoulders, and he can’t fucking take his eyes off her-she’d always been sexy in the typical ‘long legged, pretty face’ type-but _this_ is more than that, past just physical attraction, and something like fear jolts through his body, making his heart pound and eyebrows furrow in confusion.

He’s certain his chest shouldn’t hurt at the sight of anyone-let alone someone like Pepper, who had actually managed to not sleep with him after knowing him for about half a year. He'd never had a friend that was a girl but that's probably how he would describe them-friends...with severe sexual tension that would never get resolved.

The Coulson kid is still stammering over a meeting spot or time or something for his club and Tony cuts him off, not even meeting his eyes as he says distractedly, “I’ll talk to my partner-” he motions towards Pepper in that goddamn dress “-about it, you know Miss Potts? She loves this sort of thing.”

He approaches her, trying to cover up whatever it is he’s feeling with “You look great, I almost didn’t recognize you.”

He can’t read her expression as the people she’s talking to disappear or understand the tone in her voice when she asks, “What're you doing here?”

“Where’s Killian?” He asks, looking around for the brainless blonde hunk that had somehow managed to get her interested in him. There's no way a guy could bring someone who looked like Pepper to a dance and then take their eyes off her-he'd be lurking around somewhere, for sure. “Continuing his deadend research?”

“He left early for-” she can’t seem to remember, or he didn’t give her a believable explanation when he dipped “-oh, something.”

“Where’d you get that dress?” He asks, wondering if her eyes had always been so blue, or if the outfit and dangling diamond earrings brought it out.

“Oh, it was a gift,” she pauses, adding, “from you, actually-the money you...gave me for my birthday.”

He grins slightly, remembering the look on her face when he’d forgotten about her birthday and, instead of apologizing or getting a thoughtful gift for the person who’d single-handedly kept him from failing world economics, plopped a thick wad of $100 bills in her lap during their study session. He's not even sure how much he'd given her; enough _-_ although nothing would ever be  _enough_ for Pepper in his mind-if the humble shock in her eyes as she counted it meant anything. “Well, you put my money to good use.”

“Thanks.” He swears the slightest blush tints her cheeks when she glances over her shoulder, as if checking for someone, before she must remember that her boyfriend isn’t around anymore. 

“Dance with me,” Tony says, now confident that she’ll agree to be seen with him since she doesn’t have that freakish punk breathing down her-has he mentioned very _exposed_?-back. 

“Oh, no, thank you- _no_ -” He takes her hand, pulling them through the crowd, ignoring her protests along the way. “No-Tony, I-” she stops because he’s already made it to the dance floor and is taking her hand, resting the other on her hip, a bashful look and awkward smile on her face before she places her hand on his arm.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” He teases, swaying them to the beat of the slow jazzy tune in the background, watching the unease on her face slip away as they fall into conversation. 

“Oh, no- _no_ ,” she answers with a nervous laugh. “I just always forget to wear deodorant when I dance with my boyfriend’s least favorite person in front of all my professors and friends in a dress with no _back_.”

“You look great, you smell great.” He says it too quickly-too intently-knowing it the second her eyes flare with something unrecognizable and she lets out a little “Oh God” as he spins them around to avoid an extremely drunk astrophysicist he vaguely remembers from a research assignment commissioned by the US Air Force. “We could always not be partners, if that’d take the edge off.”

“I don’t-I actually don’t think you could pass Grogan’s without me.”

“I’d make it one more semester,” he scoffs-he didn’t need her _that_ bad...probably-most likely-he's 88% sure he could get by without her.

“Really?” She looks too goddamn sexy with that teasing smile and quirked eyebrow. “What’s GDP?”

He pauses, the acronym meaning something to him-possibly, in the back of his mind with stuff like Jeopardy trivia-but, hell, it’s economics, he guesses, “Money.”

“Money?” She drawls, shaking her head slightly in disbelief.

“Right,” he nods. 

“Right,” she repeats, squinting her eyes just a little as she adds, “You're missing just a bit of the idea-like the majority of it, you should learn the rest.”

“Oh the rest?” He asks airily, taking a chance and sliding his hand down her hip so it’s just bordering on inappropriate, barely touching her ass. “I’ve got you for the rest.”

“Keep your hand there and you won’t have me for anything,” she says, glancing at him cooly, the steely look on her face turning him on rather than intimidating him.

“I don’t see you moving it,” he points out lowly, swallowing hard because he doesn’t feel any underwear under an outfit that _definitely_ doesn’t allow for a bra, meaning Pepper, that dress, and those heels are all she brought to the party.

"That's-" He moves his hand again so that it's now shamelessly resting it on her ass, and he watches her eyes darken, although he's not sure if it's in anger or desire. "I'm going to-"

" _What_ will you, do?" He dares, pulling her into him so that their chests are nearly touching, warmth spreading through him for some inexplicable reason. "Hmm?"

"You're impossible."

"And you still haven't moved my hand," he retorts, looking at her pointedly, raising an eyebrow. "I'm not keeping you here against your will."

"Actually, you drug me out here to dance with you-" 

"You haven't even  _tried_ ," Tony murmurs challengingly in her ear as they continue dancing close, images of her with the blue silk in a puddle at her feet flashing through his mind, the always-lingering question about whether or not she's a natural redhead getting in his head again. “Go on, Potts, move my hand if you don’t like it.”

Their eyes lock and he stops-actually _stops_ -breathing at the conflicted look on her face and blown pupils and flushed cheeks before she slowly pulls his hand up so it’s resting on her hip again. They don’t say anything for a moment and she offers him a smile in an attempt to cut through the tension between them but it doesn’t help-not when every bit of them that’s touching is on fire. He wonders if she feels it, too, if her skin is tingling everywhere that his hands are, if she wants him to touch all of her, if she-

“How about a little air?” He asks suddenly, the room feeling way too hot and his suit feeling too tight as he imagines that smooth back of hers arched in pleasure as he’s between her mile long legs and all the things he'd do to her if he ever had the chance.

“Yes.” She seems relieved, answering immediately. “I need some air.”

They make it through the crowded floor fairly unnoticed and when they get outside to a balcony, the crisp November air of Massachusetts feels good against his skin, cooling the heat that had been steadily rising up his neck the longer he had Pepper in such close proximity.

“That was totally weird,” she begins, almost sounding like she’s reprimanding him, and he's assuming she's talking about the dance in general-not whatever the hell just happened with his hands.  _That_ was something beyond flirting-that was practically foreplay.

“Totally harmless,” he rephrases, absently wondering if she’s cold; it’s got to be like thirty degrees outside and she’s not wearing much.

“It was totally _not_ harmless, by the way-”

“We danced-nobody was watching us.”

“Everyone who I have classes with-no you know why?”

“I think you lost objectivity-I think-”

“I didn’t lose-”

“People, I think...we just danced.”

“ _No_ it was not just a dance,” she says exasperatedly, and he tilts his head slightly in question, daring to think just for a _second_ she also thought there was something more to it-that maybe she realized he hadn’t been flirting with her like he did every other girl on campus, it had been-and probably _always_ had been-more than a quick fuck on his mind when it came to her. There were girls that played hard to get, but Pepper-there's more to it-there's tension and passion and emotions involved, and that's uncharted territory for him. “You don’t understand because you’re _you_ -” _Ouch_ “-and everyone knows exactly who you are, and how you are with girls and all that, which is completely fine-” the look on her face suggests that it is _not_ fine, but she continues rambling before he can think about her expression any further “-but you know, then me, you’re...you have this-this- _feud_ with my boyfriend and I’m dancing…” he begins to protest but she talks over him “-no, because it makes me look like...the one who’s trying to-”

“I just think you’re overstating, that’s all.” He doesn’t know how they got so close, but all of a sudden, their faces are centimeters apart, and his voice is too soft for this to be a normal conversation.

“And we’re here, and then I’m...wearing this ridiculous dress…” _Of all the things that dress is,_ ridiculous _is not one of them_ , he thinks as she leans forward slightly, her bright red lips parted “...and then we were dancing like that and…”

Her hand finds his arm and her half-lidded blue eyes look at him, and he recognizes that look-almost _anticipating_ and he leans forward some more-wondering if she’s waiting for him to make a move on her or if she’s wanting to be the one to close the millimeter of space between their lips, and he wants to scream in frustration because he always knows what to do with girls but with Pepper, he feels like an amateur, horny fifteen year old fumbling around in the dark on a couch and maybe it’s inappropriate to even think about him kissing her when she’s got a boyfriend-but she’s _still_ looking at him like she’s expecting him to read her mind, like-

“There you are,” a voice comes from the doorway and Pepper jumps away from Tony in surprise. “Aldrich wanted me to-what’re you doing with _him_?” The guy, something Savin, is one of Killian’s friends; another sketchy biology major who’s way too intense about everything.

“Why, we came up here to make out, right, Pep?” Tony asks teasingly, meeting her eyes with a dirty look, laughing at the downright mortified glance she gives him.

“No, we didn’t-I needed air and-” she stammers, stepping away from him and towards Savin, who's staring at them questioningly. “What did Aldrich want?”

“He’s coming back to the party, wanted me to find you,” he says casually, looking her up and down once. “You look like you need a drink. What do you want?”

“Oh-I-a vodka martini, please. Very dry with olives-a lot of olives…” she brushes the hair out of her face, clearly a little uncomfortable and flustered as she begins to step back inside with him, “like, at least three olives.”

Tony considers questioning for the briefest second why she’s not getting herself a drink before remembering that she’s nineteen-she shouldn’t be drinking at all-that little _rebel_. He grins as he watches her leave with Savin, the sway of her hips and the creamy skin of her back making him stare after her in pure awe, wondering what she’s like with a few drinks in her, wondering if she'd warm up to him when all liquored up, wondering if she would’ve kissed him if her boyfriend’s lackey hadn’t shown up when he did.

He can officially add “cockblocker” to the list of reasons he hates Aldrich Killian.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this one is long af in comparison to the others, so I'm sorry but I had a lot to get through lol. Thanks for reading this and have a lovely day :)

“You’re sick?” Tony asks, looking at Pepper like she’s grown a second head as they walk out of economics. “You’re not allowed to be sick-you’re-we have that paper due.”

“I’ll try to control my immune system next time,” she mockingly assures, hating how congested she sounds. 

“No more all nighters,” he says, crossing his arms as if her illness is such a colossal inconvenience for him. 

“You’re one to talk,” she scoffs, looking at the bags under his eyes with faint worry. He never slept; he was _always_ awake-doing some experiment or working with her or messing around at a party or getting scolded by Happy and Rhodes. 

“I’m not the one who’s sick,” he points out. 

“That’s because there’s so much alcohol coursing through your body no bacteria can even live in you,” she retorts, not wanting him to gloat about his amazing immune system. She’d heard _enough_ about immune systems; Aldrich had gone on and on about something he could do that would improve her health indefinitely since she’d come down with whatever it is she’d come down with. 

“I’m not always drunk,” he says defensively. “Are you getting better or is this the beginning?”

“I don’t know-I-I’m probably getting a fever,” she feels her forehead, which is warm but not too concerning yet. “I’ve taken plenty of medicine, it’s just a cold.”

“Well-” his lip quirks up “-it sounds like a _fever_ , but whatever.”

She glares at him, adjusting the bag on her shoulder and asking, “So when are you wanting to finish the essay?”

“When’s it due?” He asks flippantly and she wants to strangle him; this is their _midterm grade_ he’s talking about. 

“Monday, today is Thursday,” she grits out, wondering what ever possessed her to agree to helping him when he came to her, practically begging for her help because he was failing world economics. 

“What about today?” He asks, leaning against the wall, looking her up and down once and it makes her self-conscious because she’s not wearing anything too out there. It almost looked like he was _judging_ her. 

“I have an essay I have to finish tonight for another class.”

“Friday, then?”

“I,” she pauses, knowing Aldrich probably has some last minute plans for them he’ll spring on her Friday afternoon and Tony would never take a Friday night study session seriously. “Can’t.”

“Well, I can’t Saturday.”

“You actually can’t or you have a party you need to go to?” She asks sternly. 

“Nah, I really can’t-ask Rhodey, I have a presentation thing,” he says and she can’t tell if he’s being serious; a ‘presentation thing’ didn’t sound incredibly valid but he’d dropped Rhodes’s name and he knew she could contact him to check his alibi. “So I guess we’re stuck doing it Sunday?”

“I have plans in the morning,” she says, chewing her bottom lip, wondering how this is going to play out. “Which leaves us doing it Sunday night-when all the libraries and coffee shops close early.”

“Then come to my dorm,” he offers casually. 

“Yes, let's go to _your_ dorm room, that just sounds like a great idea,” she says, looking at him distrustfully. 

“I don’t ever take girls to my room, Pep, Rhodey won't put up with it,” he says, the sincerity in his voice catching her off guard before he ruins it with,  “I always go to theirs. Or a bathroom.”

“You sure are Prince Charming, aren’t you?” She asks, thinking through the offer-if she went, there was a chance Rhodes would be there or at least stop by, meaning Tony would somewhat behave but Aldrich would _not_ like the fact that she’s in Tony Stark’s dorm room. It may be for an entirely innocent purpose, but she knows how it looks. 

“Oh, don’t worry, Pep, I’d romance _you_ properly,” he assures with a flirtatious smile. 

“You don’t know a thing about romance,” she scoffs because Tony and his girl-a-night relationship plan was far from ideal. “I don’t like that it’s cutting so close to the due date.”

“Then cancel your plans with Killian tomorrow.”

“I-Tony, I can’t-”

“Yeah, you can.”

“No I can’t, I-”

“Then we have to do it Sunday or not at all,” he shrugs, putting his hands in his pockets. 

“If…” She pauses, considering how to word this without making it seem like she needed him to do her a favor. “If I come, you-you can’t tell _anyone_ that I’m there, alright?”

“Awww,” he fake simpers. “Does wittle insecure Killian have a jealous streak?”

If he only _knew_ how many times Aldrich had brought him up during their arguments-it would make his head explode with egotistical pride. 

“I don’t want to know what he’d be like when he hears that I am going to _your_ room at night to work on an essay,” she says, adding, “I mean, come on, that sounds like something you’d tell your parents in _high school_ when you’re sneaking around.”

 _“Pepper Potts snuck around in high school_?” He asks scandalously, his eyes wide with shock. “Call the press-this is news-how old were you when you lost your virginity?”

“That’s not-” she cuts herself off, hating how he always got her so goddamned flustered with his inappropriate questions “-that isn’t any of your business.”

He squints at her, asking, “Sixteen?”

“What were you? _Twelve_?” She asks, rolling her eyes. 

“Fourteen, nice try,” he says dryly, looking at her closer. “Fifteen? Seventeen?” She must make a face that gives it away or something because he grins mischievously. “ _Seventeen_ , really? Late bloomer? Or did you make him wait? Or-oh God, _please_ tell me it wasn’t Killian.”

“No it wasn’t-” she stops, feeling the blush rise up her cheeks and the back of her neck, her ears turning bright pink, because she’d been trying too hard to present herself as not-prudeish to Tony, in order to avoid his teasing, that she hadn’t considered how defending her honor-or lack of it-would be recepted “-please, just stop talking.”

“Potts, you could make a sinner change his ways looking that cute,” he says, his expression soft and not at all flirty, but rather incredibly serious, and she isn’t sure how to respond to it. They’d had a lot more of these moments recently-probably since they’d nearly kissed on the balcony at Winter Formal-and she never knew what to do when their eyes met and neither wanted to look away. It terrified her because she could deal with Tony when he’s being an unbearable, womanizing son of a bitch but if he’s being sincere in his compliments, she turns into a blushing, stammering teenage girl. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone that you’re coming to my dorm to have a night of wild, hot sex.” _In your dreams, Stark_ , she thinks before realizing that it’s probably exactly what’s in his dreams-if she’d had dreams about _him_ , he’d most definitely had a few about her. “Except Rhodey, of course...you want him in the room as a chaperone or can you handle being alone with me for a few hours?”

“I think I can manage _not_ jumping you,” she promises sarcastically. 

“I don’t see how, this fine piece of ass,” he gestures at himself, laughing and flinching when she raises her hand to slap him. “What do you want for a snack while you're there? You ask for it and I’ll have it.”

She can’t help the smile that spreads across her face because he sounds like a little kid getting excited for a play date. “I don’t care, Ramen’s good,” she answers. 

“Drinks; Coke? Coffee? Vodka?”

“I don’t-” he gives her a pointed look when she’s about to say she doesn’t care so she pauses, thinking, before saying, “Hot chocolate.”

“Ramen and hot chocolate?” He asks, wrinkling his nose slightly at the-admittedly odd-mixture. “Are you pregnant?”

“You don’t have them together,” she says, glancing down at her watch, realizing she’s got to go; she’s meeting Aldrich for lunch in ten minutes. “I need to leave.”

“So soon?” He asks, getting up from where he was leaning on the wall. 

“Yeah, I’ll see you Sunday-is...five okay?” 

“Oh, whenever you want-I’ll be there,” he smiles, a genuine smile that makes her heart flutter because there’s no arrogance or cockiness or despicable undertones. He’s a looker most the time, but he’s unbelievably handsome when he’s not being an asshole. He moves like he’s about to go the other direction before he pauses, reaches out for her shoulder, pressing a chaste kiss to her cheek. “See ya round, Potts.”

He leaves down the walkway outside of the building where their economics class is held and she watches him go for a moment, wondering if he’s mellowing or if this is some new strategy-this emotional, sensitive guy act-to get in her pants. 

Either way, it’s working and the more she  compares him and Aldrich, the more she realizes she’s utterly fucked. 

-

“You look happy,” Tony remarks as he opens his door around six thirty on Sunday to find Pepper practically fuming and he immediately begins thinking of all the possible things he could’ve done that pissed her off, but nothing comes to mind-he’d been exceptionally good since Winter Formal. 

“I’m a bundle of _joy_ ,” she seethes as she walks past him and into his room, the look on her face scaring Rhodey, who mouths an incredulous ‘What did you _do_?’ as he glances between him and Pepper.

“Bad day?” He asks cautiously as he takes in her appearance; she’s dressed up for something-she’d mentioned that she had plans earlier-and was probably freezing on her walk over here because she’s in a short sleeve blouse, pressed dress pants with a thin belt and her ever-present heels while it’s _snowing_ outside.

“Don’t get me started-” she says, starting, “I just spent six hours with Aldrich and his stupid friend-you know Hammer?-and his even stupider, airhead slut of a girlfriend from Brown.”

He laughs, mostly in relief, because she’s finally coming to her senses if she’s realizing that Killian and his friends are a bunch of asses and she’s not mad at _him_ for once. “Is 'stupider' even a word in your vocabulary?” He teases as she kicks off her heels, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Normally you’re much more...mature in your language.”

“Fuck off,” she scoffs, looking at him with a perturbed scowl. “Is _that_ mature enough for you?”

Rhodey laughs at her before he moves toward the door, throwing on a jacket on his way. “I’m leaving for a few hours to let you two work, Pepper-Tony knows to be on his best behavior and if he’s not, I have a knife in that drawer,” he gestures towards his night stand. “I’ll help with the clean up if you need it.”

“Thanks,” she smiles as he leaves, shutting the door firmly behind him.

“You hungry?” Tony asks, eyeing her closely, wondering what was so bad about Hammer that made her _this_ angry. Justin Hammer was like a big dumb baby; fairly harmless and cute to watch try new things, but would never amount to anything, really.

“Starving,” she says as she begins looking through her bag. 

He gets water bottles out of the minifridge in his room, filling up two instant cups of Ramen noodles and putting them in the microwave for a few minutes before asking, “What’d Hammer do that pissed you off?”

“Open his mouth,” she responds dryly, letting her hair out of the updo it’d been in, shaking it so it settled on her shoulders. “What do you know about him? Are his parents rich? How’d he even get into this school? He can’t possibly have an IQ above...five.”

He laughs heartily because Pepper’s normally well-mannered when it comes to other people, even unbearable people, and he sits on Rhodey’s bed, answering, “Yeah, he’s a legacy kid-Dad owns Hammer Industries, he’s me but without the genius. Are you still sick?”

She shrugs slightly, picking up her notebook, responding, “Yeah, I have a fever.”

“You cold?” He notices that her shirt is slightly wet from the snow and the room is fairly cool-the cheap heaters didn’t do much against a Massachusetts winter.

“A bit,” she answers as she rifles through the pages of her binder.

“Well, you want a jacket?” She meets his eyes quizzically, as if she doesn’t trust him, and he adds mockingly, “I can get one of Rhodey’s if it would be _weird_ to wear mine.”

“I don’t-” she stops, sighing “-I don’t care, Tony.”

He grins when he picks up a grey MIT hoodie of his that’s hanging on the back of his chair and tosses it to her when she’s not looking, hitting her square in the face as the microwave beeps.

“Look away,” she says, glaring when he continues staring at her. “I’m going to take my top off, Tony, you don’t get to see it.”

“Oh-I-” He stops, figuring it didn’t make a lot of sense for her to leave a wet blouse on and put the hoodie over it “-never mind.” He turns his back to her, getting the Ramen from the microwave, hearing the rustling of her taking off her top, the image of her bare back from Winter Formal flashing through his mind, making him spill some of the scalding noodles on his hand. He mutters a curse and sticks his finger in his mouth, setting the cups down on top of the microwave as he allows himself to be in pain for a second.

“I’m decent now,” she says and he glances at her, some emotion he’s never felt before getting caught in his throat as she sits there, on his bed, in his hoodie. He’d never seen someone else in his clothes, he always left before there could be a morning-after discussion, but he’s fairly certain it still wouldn’t make him fumble like he is now. “Tony?”

“I burned myself,” he answers lamely, holding up his hand, recovering quickly by remarking, “See the things you make me do, Potts?”

“Yeah, me and my wondrous powers making you hurt yourself.”

 _You and your wondrous_ something.

He gets plastic forks from the small organization compartment Rhodes had put in their room, sticking them in the cups before he carries them across the short space to hand one to her, sitting next to her on his bed. She thanks him and just holds it in her hands for a moment, letting it warm her up as she sits criss-crossed, her notebook in her lap, pen by her side.

“Your room is a lot cleaner than I thought it’d be,” she says conversationally, twirling the noodles around on her fork.

“Rhodey’s a neat freak and I-” he stops, distracted, when she blows on her fork to cool it down, her lips forming a perfect ‘O’ “-I don’t do much but sleep here.”

She hums through a mouthful of Ramen, looking behind him at a poster on his wall, eyebrows quirking in question, not having to ask-it was an odd picture. He had a poster above his bed of the atom bomb going off over Nagasaki with the quote “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” painted in giant, red, uppercase letters across it.

“Just a personal thing,” he says vaguely, waving his hand slightly at it. “About science and inventions and weapons and all that stuff.” She looks slightly confused by his statement so he continues, “I love science and explosions and all but...no one except psychos _want_ see the world blown up. It’s a...reminder that my dad and Oppenheimer had pure ideas and a-a passion, a love for math and physics like I do before they wiped out a couple hundred thousand people with two bombs. I don’t wanna be like them.”

Pepper looks at him intently-almost concerned or maternal-before blinking, glancing down at her cup, saying, “That’ll be hard, considering you’re the face of a weapons company.”

“Yeah, I’m…” he pauses, briefly wondering if he should tell her, before deciding to hell with it. “I’m working on something-Artificial Intelligence-it’s going to change the way everything works.” He was way beyond ‘working on’ something; JARVIS was already well underway and nearly fully operating.

“How?” 

“It’s...complicated-it can do scans, detect life, facial recognition, map out places with remarkable accuracy, do weapons demonstrations-we’ll have a better idea of what’s going on under the bomber planes. It’s like having an all-knowing digital God around us.”

“ _That_ sounds scarier than a bomb killing people,” she says, spinning the noodles around her fork again.

“But a friendly God,” he assures, noticing that there’s something in her eyes close to unease. “It’s not going to be like one of those robots-take-over-the-world movies, I have full control of JARVIS and can completely disable him at any time-I’m not an _idiot_.”

“JARVIS?” She questions and he realizes he just let the name slip-maybe he _is_ an idiot, after all.

“Just A Rather Very Intelligent System,” he informs, adding, “I named him after my butler.”

“Your butler?” Her eyebrows furrow.

“Yeah, Edwin Jarvis was my babysitter and resident father figure when I was a kid,” he says, wondering when the hell the conversation took such a depressing turn. “Anyway, don’t we have an essay to write?”

Pepper’s expression is gentle as she stares at him for a second, looking as if she’s going to say something horribly sentimental, before she agrees, moving to sit with her back against the wall, resting her notebook on her knees.

-

Four hours later, they’re finishing up their final rough draft and have four empty cups of Ramen noodles laying on the bed and floor. During that time, between three mugs of hot chocolate, they’d wound up sitting next to each other against his wall on his bed, Pepper wrapped up in a blanket because her fever was making her cold, their shoulders resting on the others and Tony wonders if it’s her sickness or _her_ that’s making his skin burn where they’re touching.

He watches her closely as she writes, those pink cheeks and smooth skin captivating him, feeling the heat radiate off her feverish body. She looks good-she looks _unbelievably good_ -in his sweatshirt as she sits on his bed, her teeth worrying her bottom lip as she thinks over the phrasing of certain sentences. He knew she was a perfectionist but he didn’t know she was actually, clinically insane when it came to the wording of stuff; never in his _life_ had he heard the rule that one should never use a word twice in the same sentence, but apparently, it was more sacred than the Ten Commandments to her. She had written-

“Tony?” Pepper’s voice cuts through his thoughts, sounding annoyed, and he wonders how long she’s been calling his name. “ _Tony St-_ ”

“What?”

“What’s with you today?” She asks, squinting at him like she's trying to figure him out. “You haven’t made one single inappropriate remark or asked about my sex life or-oh my god, are you dying?”

“No-I’m not-I’m not _dying_ ,” he scoffs, trying to recover and resume his cool, aloof facade. “I’m tired, it’s exhausting being this sexy and genius.”

She murmurs something noncommittally and he watches those oh-so kissable lips purse in frustration before she asks, “What’s a synonym for independent?”

“Huh?”

“I’m-the _essay_ , Tony-I can’t reuse ‘independent’ and I...when you say an ‘independently operating bank,’ how else can I word it?”

“Oh, for the love of God, Pep, it’s okay to use ‘independent’ twice in a six page essay.”

“It shows a severe lack of originality,” she says, before sighing, rubbing her eyes, her eyeliner and mascara slightly smudged. “I’m exhausted, we’re not doing work this close to the deadline ever again.”

“It’s only,” he glances at the clock, “ten.”

“I’ve been up since four, forgive me,” she says, letting a yawn slip out, covering her mouth with a blanket-covered hand. “Not all of us can be  functioning insomniacs.”

“What were you doing up at-” he stops, squinting at her. “Is that a bruise?”

“What?” Her hazy blue eyes focus on him as he moves his hand towards her face, cupping her jaw as he thumb rests on her cheek, resting next to a faint-incredibly faint-bruise. He tries to ignore how warm and soft her face is in his hand-the way it’s a perfect fit. “Oh- _that_ -it’s from a door-some idiot coming out of the library couldn’t see me on the other side of the _glass_.”

Her laugh is humorless as she looks at him, her eyes flitting down to his lips, the weight of the situation-their position-crushing his chest and he tilts his head slightly, waiting for her to give him some kind of go-ahead but she doesn’t; she rests her forehead against his and closes her eyes with a sigh. “Tony-I can’t, Aldrich would-” she stops when they hear the scratching of a key in the door and he pulls away, letting go of her and giving them both personal space right as Rhodey comes in the door. 

“Hey, you both made it,” he says with a smile, shaking snow off his jacket. _Barely_. “You done?”

“Not yet,” Tony answers, looking down at the mess of papers on his bed. “The last rough draft is somewhere in here.”

“Is it snowing hard?” Pepper asks, watching Rhodey as he hangs his coat up.

“Yeah, it’s getting serious. I think it’s only going to get worse,” he answers, eyeing her with concern. “You might want to leave soon.”

 _Fuck you, Rhodey, fuck you_. 

“Yeah-I-” she glances at Tony but she doesn’t meet his eyes “-I probably should. I can finish it when I get back to my dorm.”

“No-I can type it up,” he offers.

“You don’t have a computer.”

“Oh Potts, you underestimate me.” He could get into anywhere on campus he wants at any time he wants-he could _build_ his own computer if he wants. 

“But I-”

“Come on, you said you were tired. Let me do _something_ ,” he begs, raising his eyebrows with the plea. 

“I...fine-okay, but meet me before Grogan’s so I can proofread it,” she gives in, getting up from his bed, keeping the blanket wrapped securely around her, looking downright adorable as it swallows her whole. “I’m going to leave, thanks for the food and drinks.”

He watches as she collects her stuff and take the blanket off, folding it neatly and placing it on the end of his bed before he realizes she’s _leaving_ leaving-like _now_. 

“You’re not walking to your dorm like _that_ ,” he says, standing up, groaning at his muscles that do not like him after sitting cross-cross for nearly four hours straight. 

Pepper glances down at her outfit-the strappy heels, tailored pants, his hoodie-before saying, “I’ll give you your sweater back tomorrow.”

“That’s not- _you're_ not going to walk anywhere by yourself this late at night.”

“I walk back from-” she cuts herself off, but he assumes she was going to say Aldrich’s dorm “-I walk by myself all the time at night.”

“Well, that’s idiotic,” he retorts bluntly, wondering why Killian wouldn’t be concerned about Pepper walking alone on a college campus-she’d be an easy target for anyone wanting their way with a pretty teenage girl. 

“Yeah, Pepper, that’s really stupid,” Rhodes chimes in, nodding in agreeance with Tony, probably for the first time ever. 

“Thanks,” she responds flatly, leaning against the door as she brushes the hair out of her face. 

“Besides, you gotta give this back,” Tony tugs at the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “You can’t leave it here because then you’d freeze to death on your walk and you can’t just give it back to me in class because then people would assume things-” he winks at her “-you’re staying or I’m following.”

“It-Tony, I will not stay here.”

“Then let me get my coat and I’ll walk you back,” he says, looking around for his coat before picking it up and putting it on. “You’re going to get frostbite if you walk back in those shoes.”

“They are perfectly-”

“I have a pair of slippers,” Rhodey offers, looking at her feet. “They might be a bit big but they’re warm.”

She begins to protest but Rhodey ignores her, finding the slippers under his bed and handing them to her. She puts them on and they are a bit big but it’s better than nothing. “Thanks, I-good night, Rhodes,” she smiles at him before opening the door and walking out, Tony trailing closely behind her. 

They kind of have to sneak her out because she’s not technically supposed to be in the boy’s dorm so they go out through the back, the freezing, snowy weather catching him by surprise-Rhodey hadn’t mentioned that it was one step down from a _blizzard_ outside.

It’s not too far of a walk to her dorm and they make small talk the whole way back, discussing their plans for Christmas-he’s going to Happy’s and she’s going to Vermont to visit her uncle. He doesn’t ask about her parents, whom she doesn’t mention when speaking of the most family-oriented holiday of the year, and wonders briefly what her story is; they talk all the time but they never talk family. She’s young-young enough that she should still have a family-but that’s not how life works, because otherwise _he_ would still have his parents around, too. 

Suddenly, they’re outside of her dorm and he doesn’t want to let her go-but not wanting to bother sneaking in to see her to her door; it’s harder to get into the girls dorm than the guys. 

“Well-I-” he begins, not sure what to say. “What time should I meet you tomorrow?”

“Eleven is good,” she says. 

“See you at eleven thirty,” he winks and she rolls her eyes tiredly. “Where?”

“Library is fine,” she answers, glancing up at the snow that’s coming down with a slightly aggressive passion now. “You should head back.”

“Yeah,” Tony sighs heavily, not taking his eyes off her, the way she looks with those rosy cheeks and snow-covered strawberry blonde hair burned in his mind indefinitely. “I should.”

They stand there for a moment, just a fuckton of snow and their emotions between them, before she says, somewhat awkwardly, “You know-earlier-I-I only said what I did because of Aldrich-”

“Yeah, I understand,” he lies because he _doesn’t_ understand.

“-he’s already a naturally jealous person and I wouldn’t want him to find out-”

“It’d be bad,” he agrees, stepping closer, knowing it wouldn’t be bad-not at all-if she and Aldrich ended things right this very second.

“-because he’d be angry and he gets-”

Tony can’t take it anymore; her rambling excuses about her boyfriend, their dancing around whatever this is, the built up tension between them every time their eyes meet.

He wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her into him, crashing their lips together, relieved when she doesn’t shove him away but instead melts into the kiss; their mouths fusing together as his tongue runs along her bottom lip and good _God_ -she has no right to make this feel better than even the best sex he’s ever had.

Her hand reaches up to play with the hair on the back of his head and he holds her tighter, both her arms slung over his shoulders now, as one of his is still around her waist and the other moves up to cup her face, reveling in the way her jaw feels as it moves against his hand. She still tastes like chocolate and something unique-something _her_ -something that made him want to have her there and then, against the outside building wall of the dorm.

He’s not sure how long they stand there but it doesn’t feel like enough when she pulls back slowly, her lips swollen and eyes half-lidded as she looks at him.

“Do you want your hoodie?” She asks, breathlessly, and he laughs-why is _that_ the first thing she thinks of?

“No,” he leans closer, guiding their mouths back together, murmuring “It looks better on you” against her before he takes her bottom lip between his teeth, tugging slightly, a rush of excitement coursing through him when she whimpers at the feeling.

“I have to go,” she says when they pull apart for the second time and he wants to protest-wants to keep her _right_ here-wants her to break up with Killian _right_ now-but she presses a brief, hot, open-mouthed kiss to his lips and steps out of his arms before he can even say goodnight.

He watches her leave, shaking off the snow the moment she gets in the door, glancing over her shoulder to give him a gentle smile from inside before she disappears down the hallway, leaving him there in the courtyard with his lips tingling and body on fire.

He’s fucked-so, utterly, hopelessly fucked.


	4. Chapter 4

Pepper can’t believe her eyes. 

Tony Stark is sitting there at their unofficial, official study table in a tailored black pants and a button up white shirt with black embellishments on it- _early_ for probably the first time in his life. She had hassled him for weeks about his inability to get to stuff on time before giving in and just accepting that he’d always be at _least_ thirty minutes late to everything and she planned accordingly. But today, when she had planned on meeting him at 11:00 and have about thirty or forty-five minutes to herself before he showed up, he’s sitting there at 10:52 looking over a few pages of something, probably their essay, and he grins mischievously when he notices her. 

“Morning,” he says cheerfully, flipping the papers back to the front page, leaning back in his chair comfortably. “You're dressed up,” he refers to the black dress and heels she’s wearing. “Gotta hot date? Oh-no, just Killian, sorry I forgot.”

“Good morning-and no, I have a presentation later for my midterm in business,” she says, unsure of how she should act-how they should act-what the proper etiquette is towards handling severe sexual tension with a guy who you kissed the night before, a guy who is _not_ your boyfriend. “Is this the first time you’ve ever been on time to something?”

“I’m not on time, Pep, I’m actually _early_ ,” he pushes the papers across the desk as she sits down. “I had JARVIS go over it, fix some stuff, took care of that ‘independently operating bank’ issue.”

She pauses, wondering if he’s going to mention _it_ but he doesn’t seem like he is, so she takes the papers. “Thanks, Tony...” There’s an awkward moment of silence so she asks, “So, um, how does JARIVS work-is it a scanner or a computer or something?” She figures if she can get him talking about something not related to sex, it might ease the knot in her stomach. 

“He’s a program,” he begins, that excited gleam in his eyes making something in her heart twist. He never seemed to be passionate about _anything_ except his little experiments, even chasing skirts was done with a flippant facade-his own little world of math and science was where he was happy.  “I’ve-okay, don’t tell people this, it wasn’t cleared with, well, anyone and it has the potential to all go to shit if the wrong people get ahold of it so I’m on shaky ground with legality right now but the second the Armed Forces hear about JARVIS and his capabilities, all will be forgiven-anyway, I entered him into the school’s mainframe. He’s still got a few glitches but he’s a...he’s a brain, essentially. A perfect brain with access to all information imaginable. I can talk to him, he can talk to me. He understands a lot.”

Her eyes scan the page as he speaks, noting a few changes in the wording, but it reads well. JARVIS has done an exceptional job; an essay that was barely held together by random verbs, nouns, and four-syllable words last night now sounded comprehensible and even intelligent.

“It meet your standards?” He asks and she meets his eyes, wondering if he’d always looked so good or if she’s biased because of last night. 

“It’s good,” she says, nodding slightly in approval. 

“Excellent. We have an hour,” he says, his voice dropping low as he wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Wanna make out?”

Her heart stops-going from not mentioning it at all to suggesting doing it again is a big, poorly calculated step. 

“No,” she answers, lips pursing slightly. 

“Ouch-was I that bad?” He asks playfully, knowing _damn well_ he was a good kisser, resting his face in his hand.

“I have a boyfriend, Tony.”

“Yeah, you really seemed to care last night. What, with your tongue down my throat and all,” he says, setting off the guilty feeling she’d been wrestling with since she got to her dorm room.

 _A_ kiss wasn’t really cheating, was it?

“You kissed me first,” she argues.

“You kissed me _back_ ,” he counters, his grin cocky and confident. 

“I-I...was tired and not thinking straight,” she says, trying to find an excuse for both herself and him.

“So not only was it bad, it was also a mistake? You sure know how to make a man feel good about himself.”

“I never said it-” she stops herself from saying ‘was bad’ but Tony could tell what she was going to say.

“Oh, so it was good but a mistake?” He clarifies and she wants to smack the arrogant look right off his face.

“No, you know what, on second thought, maybe it was bad.”

It had not been bad. At all. And they both knew it.

“So I need practice?” She nods in response and he says, “Well, _now_  I gotta find someone to practice with.”

“Then go find someone to practice with, Tony, you’ve got an hour,” she says, looking back at the paper, not making eye contact. 

“Well, I would, but the person I’ve got in mind is busy,” his voice is slightly muffled because of the hand his head is resting on and she continues pretending to read over the essay and just hums in response, not sure what to say. “She doesn’t even seem to wanna look at me.”

Pepper looks up at that and regrets it immediately; the expression on Tony’s face is too intense, too meaningful, too _wrong_ -she has a boyfriend-she shouldn’t be exchanging looks like this with anyone but him-she shouldn’t be _kissing_ anyone but him. 

She definitely shouldn’t _not_ feel guilty for the way she feels around Tony, either. 

“There she is.” His voice is soft, his chin still resting on closed fist as he stares at her intently. “You know, I’ve never told her, but she’s got the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.”

_Oh God._

“That’s nice,” she says slowly-she can’t handle this, not when he’s being sincere, when his comments aren’t full of innuendo, not when he’s focused on her like she’s the center of the universe.

She has to ruin it all somehow-start an argument-get him talking about tech again-do something because the look on his face means he’s thinking things-mature, adult things about romance and love-that he definitely shouldn’t be.

She is, as her boyfriend to whom she had not been incredibly loyal to often reminds her, off limits.

“I’m serious,” he says, voice still soft and low. 

“I’m sure you are, you and your little one liners,” she tilts her head, asking, “How many girls has _that_ worked on?”

“You’re the first.”

“It’s going to give you a 0% success rate, then, I suggest not using it again.”

“Well, it’d be a lie on anyone else, so...” He leaves the statement unfinished and she’s swallows hard, wondering what would be so bad about maybe, say, one more kiss.

Kisses weren’t too bad-it wasn’t  particularly exclusive, intimate act that couldn’t just be done between friends. Aldrich could-possibly-live with the fact that she kissed someone else while dating him; it wasn’t as if-

“I’ve always had this fantasy,” Tony begins and she lets out an internal sigh of relief-he’s going to ruin any meaningfulness this moment has. “That I had this girlfriend who could put up with me-she’d be a wreck, ‘cause I’d worry her with my partying and drinking and all nighters but she’d be...so proud of the man I’d become-I’d change a lot just for her. And she’d be wildly conflicted, which would only make her more-” his eyes roam over her face “-crazy about me.”

It takes her a second to recover-he’d caught her completely off guard with that-but she finally manages to ask sweetly, “Does this fantasy make room for her boyfriend?”

His eyebrows furrow slightly and he sits back, saying, “Well, she’d have to break up with him, obviously.”

“Hmm,” she hums, eyes flitting back down to the essay, wondering if he could hear her heart pounding in her chest. “I don’t think she has plans to.”

“That’s a shame,” he murmurs, eyeing her closely. “I could rock her world.”

“Oh, is that what you think?”

He leans forward and she didn’t realize the table is so small-they’re unbearably close and he says, daringly, “I think you’re  _still_ flustered by that kiss, Potts-tell me Killian does that to you any more, tell me you’re not thinking about last night right _now_.”

He must’ve noticed that she had started watching his lips as he talked, absently wondering how they felt so soft when they looked slightly chapped, and she immediately looks up at his eyes again, saying disbelievingly, “I wasn’t.”

“Bull shit,” he laughs, giving her a knowing, cocky grin before asking suddenly, head tilting slightly in question, “What do you see in Killian? Is it ‘cause he’s taller than me?”

“Yes, Tony,” Pepper answers sardonically. “I have been with Aldrich for over two years because he’s _tall_.”

“Well, what is it, then? He’s...sketchy, he’s skirting around a lot of government bans-”

“And you’re not with JARVIS?”

“-he’s into some _weird_ stuff, Pep; his research can be used for horrible things-”

“You own a _weapons company_ -”

“-also, what’s with his jealousy? A bit possessive, if you ask me. What? Two years together and he doesn’t trust you?”

 _Well, after last night, he_ shouldn’t _trust me_.

“Everyone has their flaws,” she says absently.

“And his is...his entire persona?”

“Tony, I hate to break it to you, but you’re no gentleman,” she snaps. “You don’t want a girlfriend, you want _sex_ , you’re-”

“You have no idea what I want, Pepper,” he says, his voice low and eyes dark as he looks at her-and God, she has never felt such a strong desire for _anyone_  before.

“No, I guess I’ve just misheard all your vulgar comments since the day we met,” she says, watching the emotions on his face, watching as he realizes-somehow manages to, through that thick, egotistical skull of his-that he really hasn’t treated her too exceptionally, either. “The first thing you said to me was something about my _legs_ , Tony.”

She remembers it vividly; she’d walked across the classroom-she’d already known who he was when the professor called him out as her partner-and she hadn’t gotten a hello, she’d gotten a “I’ll do the whole assignment _right now_ if you let me see where those legs end.”

“They’re great legs,” he defends, glancing down at them.

“That’s-I-”

“Fine, whatever, Pepper, stay with Killian. Keep fantasizing about me and when you-”

“I _do not_ fantasize about you-” 

“Sure you don’t- _anyway_ , when you come to your senses, I’ll be waiting.”

“It won’t ever happen,” she assures, glad her voice doesn’t waiver as she says it because he suddenly leans very,  _very_ close to her and she can feel his breath on her lips.

“Yeah you will, ‘cause you’re forgetting something, Potts.”

His eyes are on her lips and she subconsciously licks them, realizing a second too late that he’ll interpret that as an invitation and _Oh my God, they’re in public_ and any one of her or Aldrich’s friends could see them but he doesn’t seem to care-of course he doesn’t-as he closes the bit of space between their mouths, the kiss brief and tension-filled and he faintly tastes like toothpaste and it’s all definitely not enough and she wants to object when he pulls back, but Tony just gives her lopsided smirk instead as he murmurs, “I _always_ get what I want.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has very little actual Pepperony so I'm sorry for that but I just feel like Rhodes and Natalie have been severely underrepresented thus far in the story lol

“Haven’t seen Pepper around in a while, what’d you do to her?” Rhodey asks, somewhat inquisitive but mostly accusing, as he folds his clothes.

“I-” Tony begins, watching the disappointed look appear on his friend’s face, recognizing the tone of his voice “-fucked up...big time.”

“ _What_ did you do?”

"Nothing," he answers quickly, disbelievingly.

" _Tony_ -"

“I-we...I kissed her,” he runs his hand through his hair, now stressed. “Before Christmas break-when I walked her back to her dorm-I…but it wasn’t like she didn’t want it, she kissed me back,” he defends when Rhodey begins looking at him like he just confessed to rape. “I just...I think it scared her.”

“You kissed her-you kissed a girl who’s been in a committed relationship for a few years now-you-in _public_ , Tony, really?” Rhodey sounds less than amused, his lips pressed in a flat line.

“That _is_ what I just said, right?” He asks, faking an inquisitive tone, eyebrows furrowed mockingly.

“Are you proud of this or something? You don’t go after girls who’re-”

“In relationships? When has that _ever_ mattered to me?”

“I thought Pepper was managing to become your friend, Tony, I thought you were maturing.” The disappointed quality to Rhodey’s voice sets him off.

“I _am_ maturing-I didn’t sleep with her, that’s a vast improvement, I think,” he defends, turning in his swivel chair to better face his friend for the argument he can feel coming on.

“You made out with her, Tony,” he says flatly. “That’s not an improvement, that’s...situational limitations.”

“As if I couldn’t have had sex with her against the nearest building-I could’ve had sex with her _here_ , Rhodes, you were gone for hours.”

“Are you wanting a congratulations for _not_ having sex with her?” His dark eyebrows furrow, nose wrinkling slightly in annoyance. “Really? You’re wanting an attaboy for not fucking the only girl who’s ever managed to put up with you for an extended period of time?”

“That’s not-” Tony starts, now confused as to what he wanted. 

“You’re lucky she’s even tolerated you for this long-”

“I _know that_ -”

“-then what the hell were you _thinking_?”

“That I wanted to kiss her,” he answers obviously, the comment not settling too well with Rhodey. 

“There’s this thing called impulse control.”

“Well, there’s also this thing called Pepper Potts kissed you once, she might do it again.”

“You’re ridiculous, Tony,” he sighs heavily, scratching a spot above his lip. “This isn’t high school-”

“I wouldn’t know, I was there for a year-”

“-where the most popular girl made out with you and you think-”

“-I actually have-”

“- _she has a boyfriend, Tony_!” He exclaims in frustration, hands up in annoyance. “You can’t-you can’t just destroy their relationship because _you_ want to get in her pants.”

“Rhodey, I kissed her, I didn’t ask her to marry me and have my children-and? I destroyed nothing between her and Killian,” he says, adding, “If anything, I destroyed _our_ relationship because she’s avoided me for an entire month.”

"Well, you deserve that."

"Then what the hell are you so mad about? I got what I deserved, didn't I? Why are you so-"

"I'm mad at fact that you ruined it, Tony!" He's pretty fucking pissed now; nostrils flared, jaw set, and eyes hard as he glares at Tony. "Happy and I can't be your only friends-"

"Pepper and I just avoiding each other right now, it's..." he trails off, not sure what it's doing for them-certainly not  _helping_ his feelings. "A break to cool down for a second."

“Yeah, and what about when you can’t avoid each other anymore? You still have the final, you’ll talk at some point. What’re you gonna do then?” He asks tersely, arms crossed in a no-bullshit, fatherly way. 

“Why, screw her against the library wall, of course,” Tony says sarcastically, turning his attention back to his physics assignment on his desk when Rhodes processes what he just said, not wanting to hear the spiel about responsibility from him. 

“You’re unbelievable,” he starts, “I get that you have this little...obsession or whatever it is you for Pepper, but you _can’t_ always have everything you want. She’s with Killian and you-”

“She’s not happy with Killian,” he says. 

“Just ‘cause you don’t like him doesn’t mean-”

“He’s an _ass_ , Rhodey,” Tony says as he begins his projectile motion calculations. “Have you seen the way he treats her? It’s like she’s his property or something-it’s-”

“Since when have _you_ cared about the way women are treated?” Rhodes asks, giving him an exasperated look. Tony has to give his undivided attention to his homework to keep himself from responding ‘since I met _her_ ’ because dammit, it’s true. “You treat-”

“There's something off with them," he says with a heavy sigh, dropping his pencil and rubbing his eyes.

"You're jealous, Tony, there's-"

"I-sometimes I wonder if he's abusive," he confesses quietly, the thought that had plagued his brain for a few weeks now finally being voiced.

" _What?_ "

“I-there’s...think about it-he’s controlling and manipulative and possessive-” he cuts himself off, thinking back to the night they were in his dorm; the mark on her cheek, her worry about Aldrich finding out about them studying in his room, the fact that they never seemed to have a moment together where Killian didn’t manage to interrupt somehow. “She had a bruise on her face a while back and the more I think about it, she’s _always_ got bruises.”

“Have you talked to her about it?” Rhodes asks, his tone having changed considerably, deep in thought now and no longer just angry at him. 

“That’s not something you can slide into conversation,” he snaps, thinking about it for a second. “Oh, so you say Africa is the richest continent in terms of natural resources, yet the majority of the countries within it are living in extreme poverty-interesting, interesting-oh by the way, has Killian ever hit you?”

“I’m not-Tony, if you think she’s in trouble, you need to talk to her.”

“If she needs help, she can fucking ask for it.”

“Yeah, _Pepper_ -the girl you've terrorized for months because she’s the only woman in Massachusetts with long legs who won’t open them for you- _she_ is going to spill her heart out on a whim, Tony.” Rhodes stands up, clapping him on the shoulder. “You need to get your head out of your ass and realize the way _you_ treat her isn’t much better than Killian.”

“I’m not her boyfriend, I’m not-”

“Going to treat her like a decent person?” 

“I treat her perfectly fine,” he responds defensively. 

“No, you treat her like she’s just any random girl you’d hook up with.”

“I do not-”

“When’s her birthday, then? Favorite color? Favorite food?” Rhodes takes in Tony’s stumped look with a sad smile. “And yet, I bet if I asked what color her bra was yesterday, you’d know.”

 _Blush pink_ , Tony thinks, remembering the way the strap looked against her pale shoulder, barely sticking out underneath the simple V-neck shirt she was wearing, before realizing he just confirmed everything Rhodes just said. 

“ _I_ don’t act how Killian acts-”

“You don’t _know_ how Killian acts.”

“I have a bad feeling about him and-”

“That’s called a grudge-”

“-she’s different when he’s around, Rhodey, it-”

“Listen to me, Tony, if you think something’s going on then ask her,” Rhodey says seriously. “I don’t ever see them together, so I can’t-I can’t honestly tell you if your concern is valid or not. She always seems fine when I see her, but I don’t know, she might just be a good liar.”

It’s not exactly the comforting answer Tony wanted; he wanted to be told that he was overreacting and overanalyzing.

"I-thanks...I'll..." He looks at Rhodey for a moment before asking "You still mad at me?" because it looks like he's leaving; he's putting shoes and a coat on by their door.

"I have to go print something off in the library-and I'm _always_ mad at you for something," he says, sounding every bit like he meant it. 

"Love you, too," Tony grins, puckering his lips and blowing him a kiss as Rhodey begins walking out.

"Figure out what's going on between you and Pepper and I might love you back."

The door shuts and Tony stares at it for a moment, trying to shake the thoughts of Pepper out of his mind but she continues to persistently stay in the front.

She could actually be getting hurt, she could be scared of Killian-it would certainly explain her hesitancy to end things with him-the bruise he’d seen on her face could’ve been from an angry hand and not a door. But he could be using his dislike towards Killian to make problems where there weren’t any, he could be looking too deeply into their relationship, he could be using whatever feeling it is he has towards Pepper to fabricate stupid as to reasons why she should break up with a man she’s perfectly happy with.

 _I’m either paranoid or she’s getting hit around-and honestly, I don’t know which is worse for my mental health_.

\----

“He did _what_?!” Natalie exclaims, one hand flying to her mouth in shock. “When?!”

“When I went to his dorm to study, before midterms,” Pepper says, not making eye contact with her, not mentioning the kiss the morning after, either. 

“I told you going to his room was a bad idea,” she says, rubbing her temple. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding him for the whole month?”

 _Yes. That is_ exactly _why._

“No-I’ve just been busy and-”

“Yeah, _right_...so-did you kiss him back?” 

“I-I...kind of?” She answers, not wanting to say it out loud, knowing damn well she had kissed him back. 

“It’s a yes or no question, Pepper,” Natalie says, raising an eyebrow at her. 

She sighs, burying her face in her hands, mumbling, “ _Yeah_ , I did...a lot.”

“How, uh-” she clears her throat “-how far did it get?”

“Oh my God, it’s-it wasn’t-nothing like _that_ ,” she assures quickly, mortified by the fact that Natalie actually thought she’d go-well- _far_ with Tony. “He walked me back here and we were talking and it just...happened.”

“You mean he didn’t try anything in his dorm?” She asks incredulously because she had vehemently argued against Pepper going to his room, claiming it would be his chance to make some irreversible moves on her. 

“Well-no-yeah, he did, but Rhodes came in,” Pepper looks down at her suddenly-fascinating sheets, running her finger along the stripes. “But he-he wasn’t...he wasn’t being, you know, how he normally is-he was being...nice, like, really, unusually nice. It wasn’t like he...forced me or something.”

Natalie gives her an unreadable look before laying back on her bed tiredly, asking, “You going to study with him again?” 

“I have to…” she trails off, thinking about the final in Grogan’s, running her hand through her hair, worrying, “Do you think I spend too much time with him?”

“No-not really, I guess, it’s not _abnormal_ ,” she shrugs, running her finger along her eyebrow thoughtfully, continuing, “I just know that Aldrich is...how he is.”

“Well, he wants me to wear a burka and never make eye contact with another guy, so it doesn’t matter what _he_ thinks because he blows everything out of proportion, anyway,” she responds. Aldrich’s jealous streak is probably the worst thing about him-she could tolerate his narcissism and endless biology raves but his jealousy was borderline unbearable. 

“Then break up with him.”

Pepper looks at Natalie pointedly, sighing heavily, “That’s not going to happen and you know it.”

“I-Pepper, you have to remember that there’s still options out there. You’re not _stuck_ with Killian,” she says softly, knowing how strained their relationship is-it’s only holding on by a thread, and had been for a while. 

“You want me to leave Aldrich for _Tony_?”

“I mean I don’t know, how many other guys have you made out with on late, snowy nights?” Natalie asks with a knowing smirk and now Pepper regrets telling her about it. 

“It’s _Tony_ -he’s probably _slept with_ a bunch of girls on late, snowy nights,” she scoffs, not wanting to even think about her and Tony and whatever was going on between them. "He's a...slut."

“I think you’d be surprised how much he’d be willing to change for you,” Natalie says, giving her a gentle look. “You don’t-he’s already changed a lot, Pepper. I heard that he didn’t go to a single New Years Party.”

“Well that doesn’t-”

“It’s no coincidence that he didn't go after he kissed you-I wondered what’d make him act like a civil person...he’s found what he’s looking for and she’s wasting her time with a psycho.”

“What ever happened to you not believing in love and stuff?” Pepper asks, a blush rising up the back of her neck as Natalie talks about her and Tony’s relationship so flippantly. 

“People change,” she says vaguely, twirling the hair at the base of her neck that’s not in her bun. _More like people meet the love of their life,_ Pepper thinks snarkily, remembering Natalie’s constant mantra about love being a waste of time before she met Clint Barton-the man who had caught her by surprise and swept her right off her feet. “I’m telling you, you need to leave Aldrich. He’s an ass.”

“Can’t help who you love,” she says faintly, wondering if that’s even a valid point any more-not sure if she loved him or the idea of him. 

“That’s bullshit-you don’t love each other, otherwise neither of you would be spending so much time with _study partners_ ,” Natalie bites, referring to Killian’s own version of Tony-Maya something, a pretty brunette who was in a few of his classes that he studied with frequently.

It’s probably a bad sign and indicative of their unhealthy relationship that Pepper wasn’t even the slightest bit jealous that Aldrich spent so much time with her; she was _glad_ -time spent with Maya was time not spent with herself. 

“There’s nothing going on between him and Maya.”

“The same way there’s _nothing_ going on between you and Tony?” Her eyebrow quirks. 

“There _isn’t_ anything going on between Tony and I,” she says, not even believing herself. 

“Uh huh, right-” her lips purse “-how many other guys do you spend all your free time making out with?”

“For the love of God, Nat, it was _one_ kiss,” she says, although if her vivid memory of that night serves her right, there were exactly three kisses and one of them was initiated by her. And then the kiss the next day before economics-but she didn’t need to know about that.

“You need to see this from third person-you’re...that was not _just_ a kiss and your little dance at Winter Formal was not _just_ a dance and you two are not _just_ friends,” she emphasizes, adding, “Wake up, you’re smarter than this.”

“I’m smart enough to know leaving Aldrich and starting something with Tony would be a disaster.”

“Why would it be so bad?”

“It’s _Tony_ -he’s never-I don’t think he’s ever dated anyone before, I’m not going to be his guinea pig.”

“He obviously has some feelings-”

“He wants to _sleep_ with me, Nat, nothing more and nothing less.”

“I don’t think that’s all-”

“He told me once that-that part of the thrill of getting girls is the chase and that’s all I’ve done; I’ve accidentally led him on since the beginning because I wouldn’t have sex with him-I’m-I’m a _target-_ a  _goal_ to reach-for him. He’s acting the way he is because he wants sex, not because he’s-”

“You honestly think that?”

_No._

“Yes,” she nods, managing to make it not sound like a lie. If she said it enough, maybe she’d believe it. “The man is not capable of feeling anything but lust-”

“You’re so full of shit, Pepper, honestly,” she laughs, a knowing smirk on her lips. “It's not that you don't want to try it out, you're just _scared_ ,” she points accusingly and Pepper’s heart thuds in her chest when someone finally voices out loud the thoughts that had been going through her mind for months now. “You’re scared of how Killian’s going to react-you don’t know how it’d work out with Tony-you know he could break your heart so you won’t take the chance. I think you’re great Pepper, I do, but you have this...this problem with-this _need_ for control and organization and stability and Tony Stark is the opposite of all that.”

“I have a _need_ to not run the risk of getting five different STDs by sleeping with him,” she retorts, not wanting to let her know she’d got it right on the head-Tony’s unpredictableness was something she’d been weary of since the beginning and because  _now_ things like life-altering decisions and deep feelings were involved, it only made her want to push him away.

She didn’t ever know what Tony wanted or what he was going to do and her dominant personality refused to make room for him in her heart because of it.

“Cut the shit-are you going to marry Aldrich?” The look Natalie gives her is terrifying-she had a tendency to become quite scary when she got serious about something-and Pepper can’t meet her eyes as she answers, “No.”

It’s the truth; she and Aldrich had no real future. He started off great, a dream of a boyfriend, but he’d begun experimenting with something he was developing for a research project and it was changing him. He was cruel, possessive, jealous, angry-a horrible person in the body of the man she fell in love with. Although she’s not really sure if she ever _loved_ him; they started dating when she was young and after two years, her feelings had mellowed considerably and at this point she’s practically just playing a role, so it could’ve been nothing more than infatuation or adoration that put them together in the first place.

“Then _leave_ him.”

“It’s not that simple-I-”

“It _is_ that simple, you meet him somewhere and say ‘it’s over’ and that’s that.”

“You know how he gets, Nat,” she says quietly. “It’s not that simple.”

“I’ll go with you then make it somewhere public-do _something_ because I know you think it’s not a big deal if he gets a little violent every once in a while but it'll only escalate, Pepper. He doesn’t-he’s not going to get any better, it’s going to get worse,” Natalie says and her concerned tone makes Pepper look up at her instead of her chipped fingernail polish. 

“He’s not-it’s the work with Extremis that makes him violent, not-”

“You cannot make excuses for him-”

“I’m not, it’s just...it’s not necessarily _his_ fault,” she says, playing with the hair in her ponytail somewhat nervously because she didn’t like talking about this part of her and Aldrich’s relationship-ever or at all.

“You need to leave him _right_ _now_ if you think it’s okay that he hits you-”

“It happened _twice_ , Nat, that’s hardly an abusive-”

“If he does it once, he’s not scared to do it again-and stop fucking lying, just because you told me two of the times it’s happened doesn’t mean it’s only happened twice,” she says, now definitely angry because she mutters something that definitely doesn’t sound like a compliment lowly in Russian before asking snippily, “You think I don’t see the bruises when you change?”

“I didn’t realize you were ogling me while I changed, actually,” she fires back, now feeling attacked and defensive.

“I’m not into women with bruises all over them, sorry,” she says, hands up in innocence, “that must be Killian’s thing.”

“Oh, please, you act like I’m covered in them,” she snaps. “Most of them are from having sex, anyway.” 

“Mmm-hmm,” Nat hums disbelievingly, getting up from her bed and heading towards the door. “I’m not going to keep having this argument with you, Pep, he’s-when you figure out that he’s an asshole, I’ll be waiting to help you leave but I’m not going to listen to you defend him anymore.”

The dorm door slams shut and Pepper stares after it for a second, the sinking feeling of dread settling deep in her stomach, wondering when the hell her life went to shit-it had all been great at the beginning of the school year.

_I either stay with Aldrich and leave Tony or I leave Aldrich and start with Tony-and both are equally terrifying in their own right._


	6. Chapter 6

“So how was your Christmas?” Tony asks conversationally, focused on the screens in front of him, not even looking at her. “I meant to ask you earlier, but you’ve been avoiding me all month.”

“I was-it was fine-Tony-” Pepper says sternly and his head barely turns to her, clearly preoccupied with whatever’s going on with the computers “-we need to go over the presentation.”

“Uh huh,” he hums, typing something frantically as his eyes dart around the screen. “The-the Taiwan thing?”

“No, that was the midterm,” she sighs, giving up on getting his attention, asking, “How long is this going to take?”

“Approximately,” he glances at something she can’t see, “four minutes and fifty-eight seconds.”

“If I leave now, will you promise me that you show up at the library in half an hour?” She asks, adopting the same tone she typically uses when talking to little kids. That’s what it’s like talking to Tony when he gets into one of these maniac, unstoppable modes; a little kid who’s too absorbed by whatever’s in front of him that he doesn’t notice the rest of the world going on.

“No, stay-you gotta see this,” he grins, that boyish, excited grin making her heart skip a beat and their eyes meet for a long moment and she swallows hard, brushing her bangs back, purposefully putting her arm in her line of sight to break the eye contact.

“See what?” She asks, taking a step forward, the codes flashing across the five computers he has set up on his workspace meaning absolutely nothing to her; numbers were Tony’s world, words were her’s.

“JARVIS,” he motions towards something in the ceiling. “Say hello to Miss Potts.”

“Good evening, Miss Potts,” a pleasant British voice comes from...everywhere.

“What-” she starts in surprise, looking up, looking around, trying to find the source “-where is it?”

“He just...is,” Tony says distractedly, fingers flying over the numbers on his keyboard as he focuses on one screen in particular. “Okay, show off my genius, JARVIS; time, date, weather-do your magic.”

“It is 4:49 p.m. on Thursday, February  7, 1991. The weather in Cambridge, Massachusetts is twenty-seven degrees Fahrenheit, with an eighty percent chance of snow at five o’clock,” JARVIS replies.

“This is JARVIS?” She asks, remembering their conversation the night they worked on the midterm; this Artificial Intelligence is how Tony planned on reinventing the weapons industry-and he’s using it as an over glorified weather man.

“In the flesh-” he drops his grin, waving his hand vaguely “-or codes, or whatever. Ask him something, anything.” Pepper hesitates, glancing up cautiously, unsure of how to talk to an artificial person without feeling insane and Tony tries to help her. “Like-here-um....JARVIS, what’s Pepper’s body temperature right now?”

“Miss Potts is approximately ninety-nine point one degrees Fahrenheit,” JARVIS answers, the voice filling the empty lab.

“See, easy-he’s good at trivia, too, ask him _anything_ , Pep, he’s a wealth of information,” he says, almost affectionately, as he looks at the screens.

“Oh-I...JARVIS? What…” she pauses, suddenly thinking of absolutely nothing to ask. “What’s Tony’s body temperature?”

“Mr. Stark is approximately ninety-seven point eight degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Couldn’t think of anything more creative?” Tony asks, quirking an eyebrow. “You feeling confident today, Potts?”

“What’s that-”

“JARVIS, what’s her height and weight?”

“Miss Potts is approximately 5 feet, 9 inches tall. My research on women’s bodies and minds suggests that Miss Potts may not feel comfortable revealing her weight in front of a man-”

“Oh, come on, what are you?” He gives her a once over before mocking, “ _Ninety_ pounds? Here-I’ll start; JARVIS, what’s my height and weight?”

“You are five feet, nine point six inches tall, Mr. Stark. You weigh one hundred and seventy-two pounds, precisely, which is healthy for a man of your height.” Tony gives her a little smug smirk and Pepper sighs, knowing he would bug her until she gave in and gives JARVIS the go ahead. “Miss Potts weighs one hundred and twenty-four point seven pounds. This is slightly under the recommended weight for the average 5’9” woman, but my scans suggest Miss Potts has an abnormally high basal metabolic rate which would certainly result in her being mildly malnourished. Might I suggest foods that are high in carbohydrates or fat since they would-”

“Okay, JARVIS, we get it,” Tony cuts him off, turning towards her. “I’m still tinkering with that part-figuring out when he knows how much information is enough.”

“So what’re you working on now, then?” She gestures towards the computers-if JARVIS just needs ‘tinkering’ then all the computers certainly weren’t necessary.

“Oh, that, it’s JARVIS’s final phase-holograms, video messaging, live video feed-everything that _was_ pure sci-fi, brought to life.” He pauses for a moment, as if hesitant to speak, before adding, “Of course, it’ll go one of two ways; _work_ or...destroy the entire county’s power grid for an unspecified period of time.”

“ _Tony_ -” She begins exasperatedly, wondering if he’s exaggerating, wondering if he even cared about the possible repercussions, wondering if this would actually work.

She’d heard before she ever got to MIT that he was a genius but she thought a lot of it was just talk; he was a legacy kid, he had influential parents, he could simply just be more mathematically inclined than some other kids.

But after watching him flippantly start and finish all of his fifteen page assignment for Commutative Algebra-a class that tormented even the most intelligent people she’d ever met-which had been due later that same _day_ while he debated economics and flirted shamelessly with her during their study session-and then be the only one in his class who got a perfect score on said assignment-she knew the man was beyond ‘smart.’

She’d never tell him, but she realized he was a genius-probably one of those “Beautiful Mind” anomalies with an IQ of over 140 and everything.

His mind worked in wondrous ways; he saw patterns, understood codes, recognized mathematical and physics principles where she saw disaster and yet, he probably couldn’t write a single comprehensible paragraph to save his life. His mind’s constantly busy, always taking in twelve things at a time and unlike her, the things weren’t organized-they bounced around in his brain in total chaos. She’s no doctor, but she’s also fairly certain he has _severe_ ADHD that’s gone undiagnosed as part of his larger “brilliant” personality.

“Relax, it’ll probably be okay,” he says reassuringly-possibly _the_ least reassuring thing he could’ve said in that moment.

“That’s not the best-

“We’ve got a minute ‘till showtime.”

His excitement is palpable-his smile is wide and eyes are bright with curiosity and he looks- _God_ -he looks good as he stands there with his disheveled hair, burgundy MIT pullover and grey sweats. She can’t help but smile with him; she doesn’t particularly care about all this tech stuff like he does but she can see what it means to him.

Unexpectedly, Tony grabs her hand, lacing their fingers as he continues staring at the screens-at the little timer that had gotten down to 0:48 in no time. She tries to pull away at first, but his hand is rough and firm holding hers, and she can tell he’s anxious-he’s _so_ nervous about JARVIS-and she lets him find what comfort he can in her.

“You think it’ll work?” Tony asks, staring at the timer as it reaches the thirty second mark, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows tensely-now seeming more unsettled than excited.

“Of course.” Her own breathless, worried tone surprises surprises her, but she realizes she’s becoming scared _for_ him.

“Thanks, Potts,” he says, voice tight as the timer reaches ten and she glances at him curiously.

**10**

He looks absolutely petrified-face rigid, shoulders squared, eyes wide-and she wonders how much work he’s put into this;

**9**

if this is going to be considered his greatest achievement,

**8**

if this really is how he is going to revolutionize the weapons industry,

**7**

if this is the future of Stark Industries,

**6**

if-at the ripe age of twenty, Tony’s going to create what not even teams of professionals have managed to.

**5**

Pepper watches him close his eyes in anticipation,

**4**

his hand squeezing hers almost unbearably tight,

**3**

their fingers tightly laced and fire burning between their palms.

**2**

There’s no going back at this point

**1**

and she’s no longer breathing as the timer reaches zero.

Her heart stops when the lights dim for a brief moment before the power surges rather than disappears and she lets out the breath she’d been holding, tugging his hand slightly as she breathes, “It worked, Tony.”

One eye opens, his eyebrow slightly raised, as he looks around to see-yes, the lights are certainly on, and all of Middlesex County still has power-and his other eye opens, both showing nothing but relief as he smiles, not even a touch of arrogance to it or his voice as he says, “Thank _God_.”

He lets go of her hand to immediately begin typing and she feels like an absolute idiot for thinking that she lost warmth because they’re no longer touching, but she feels suddenly cold. He keeps typing away on his keyboard, and she absentmindedly wonders what he’s doing, as she jumps up slightly to sit on one of his lab tables-one of the ones not covered in papers or computers. She crosses her legs-she’s wearing dress pants because of the weather-and sits back for a moment to observe him in his element.

His little projects always make him happy-this lab is probably the only thing that makes him happy on a regular basis-and a project of this magnitude has the ability to make him so radiant, it rivals only the Sun.

Tony _happy_ is an odd sight because he’s most often tired and snarky, but happiness softens him-it’s hard to explain the effects as anything other than that.

His features are...easier-eyes crinkled in a genuine, permanent smile that makes his teeth shine in the light, hair now messily laying over his forehead, creases in his face gone entirely as he stands there, so unbelievably proud of himself.

“Okay-we’re on,” he says, stepping back from the computers. “JARVIS, show me...Venice.”

In an instant, the lights are dimmed considerably as little blue figures-straight out of _Star Wars_ -begin forming around the room, until she’s facing a downsized Saint Mark’s Basilica and the streets of a foreign city she’s only ever seen in pictures are surrounding her. She looks around in pure amazement as the buildings appear out of thin air with remarkable accuracy; she could count the petals on the tulips in a flower box near her. Tony looks even more in awe at the work, staring at the holographic cathedral like he’s dreaming, eyes wide and mouth slightly agape.

“I’m-you’re seeing this, too, right?” He asks her, the humility in his voice making her rethink a lot of her previous judgements about him.

“Yeah,” she answers as he leans back into the table she’s sitting on and crosses his arms, head tilted up to continue staring at his surroundings.

“JARVIS? How’s it going?” He asks cautiously after a minute of observing.

“All programs are fully operational, sir,” JARVIS answers and for an AI, he sounds incredibly happy. “Should I alert the-”

“No, just…” Tony glances around, still obviously unable to believe his eyes as looks at the holograms filling up the room, rows and rows of Italian streets surrounding them. “Just give me a moment.”

“Very well. Congratulations, Mr. Stark.”

“Come on, Pep,” he pats her thigh just above her knee as he pushes off the table. She gets down hesitantly as he faces the holograms, moving them with his hands, bits of blue flying by her. “Where you wanna go?” His smile is curious, adoring, and she can’t find even a bit of the playboy ass whom she met on the first day of world economics.

“I...don’t know,” she says slowly, not able to take her eyes off of him, wondering when the hell he got so irresistible-he looks so good, she almost forgets she has a boyfriend. With that mussed up hair and those warm brown eyes it’s a-

“C’mon, pick somewhere-anywhere-we’ve got the world at our fingertips,” he says excitedly as he zooms in on a little coffee shop in Venice, JARVIS having such high resolution that she can read every item on the menu. “A city you wanna see? House you grew up in? You name it and-”

“Venice is fine, Tony,” she decides, walking down a holographic street, looking up at the old Italian buildings around her, wondering how JARVIS worked-how one could get the replica of a city in a college laboratory.

“You ever been?” He asks as he follows her around the lab, walking slightly behind her as she strolls through the streets.

“To Venice?” She laughs in disbelief-she’d never even been to the beach before she was seventeen. “Never. How many times have you been?”

“Oh, a bunch. Mom loved it,” he pauses, as if he hadn’t meant to say that before asking, “What’s that project for Grogan on?”

_Right. The presentation._

“It’s not due for a few more weeks but I wanted to-”

“A few more _weeks_?” Tony asks incredulously, motioning around them. “This is once in a lifetime and you want me to miss it for something in a few weeks?”

“I didn’t know you were doing all _this_ ,” she defends, meeting his eyes. “I’d forgotten about the project until you mentioned it.”

“Keep it that way,” he nods and she wonders when they got so close-when he’d managed to trap her between him and a lab table-when he’d started talking and leaned in so far-when she’d ever become so used to sharing space with Tony Stark that she didn’t realize until too late that they’d wound up in another compromising position.

“Move,” she orders, trying to get around him but he remains stubbornly planted in front of her.

“Make me,” he challenges, tilting his head down at her.

She gives his chest a half-assed shove, suddenly not sure if she wants him to move at all because he’s incredibly warm under her hand and the look in his eyes is enough to damn near make her _melt_.

“Tony-” she begins, but he moves in closer and she shuts her eyes, parting her lips in anticipation but no kiss comes.

“If we’re doing this,” his voice is low in her ear, making her jump in surprise, and his expensive cologne overwhelms her senses as their bodies barely press together. “You’re starting it, Potts, I don’t wanna hear about your boyfriend.”

Her eyes fly open, cursing him mentally for putting her in this position; he knows damn well that she wants him but she can’t be the one who initiates anything because of Aldrich. Tony can start and she can berate him in a few minutes for starting and she’s able to walk away without feeling too guilty. Pepper’s nothing if not loyal-it had always been one of the first adjectives out of a person’s mouth when describing her-and she can’t change her entire character because Tony wants to make out in a science lab. It’s so juvenile-so childish-so-

“Time’s ticking, Pepper,” Tony warns, meeting her conflicted gaze, daring her to lean forward.

“I can’t,” she says, almost apologetically as she looks at him. “You know-”

“Killian, yeah, I know.” He almost sounds hurt by the fact that she didn’t immediately kiss him and she tries to tell herself that it’s just because he’s _Tony Stark_ -he never gets rejected-not because he’s hurt by the fact that _she_ specifically didn’t choose him.

Love’s a fickle thing.

She and Aldrich had been doing great recently-he’d been beyond happy with her constant avoidance of Tony and their relationship had soared as a result. He’d done a 180, flipping back into the supportive, charming, thoughtful, sweet, perfect guy she fell in love with a few years ago and had treated her like a queen. No matter how much he would hurt her-physically or otherwise-there was still a connection she felt to him, a connection that wasn’t _fear_ -like Natalie constantly said-a connection that was some sort of deep attachment. She didn’t want to leave him, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the first man who’d told her he loved her, there was a part of her heart that’d always be his.

But then there’s Tony.

He had managed to destroy her entire concept of him in one semester-and that complete personality change had thrown her off. He did what Aldrich had done, in reverse-but there was no guarantee that he couldn’t go back-that he wasn’t acting like this because she’s some sort of conquest he has in mind.

_Tony or Aldrich, Tony or Aldrich, Tony or Aldrich, Tony or Aldrich, Tony or Aldrich, Tony or Aldrich, Tony or Aldrich, Tony or Aldrich, Tony or Aldrich, Tony or-_

Tony’s face is in her hands and her lips are on his before she even realizes what she’s doing-he’s pressing her into the table and running his hands over her ass when her mind catches up to her actions.

His grip is possessive-but in a needy way, rather than that controlling grasp Aldrich always had around her. His tongue is hot as it runs along her bottom lip and she opens her mouth, tasting coffee and mints as he lifts her up, setting her down on his table. Her legs wrap around his waist, pulling their hips together, and the feeling of _him_ stirring in his pants should make her horribly guilty, but she can’t bring herself to feel anything except desire.

His hands are rougher than she’d thought they’d be-she’d thought being a rich kid would mean soft, moisturized palms-and they’re coarse against her skin, leaving a trail of goosebumps as they roam over her back, fiddling with her bra strap for a moment before it’s undone. He pulls back from the kiss and reattaches his mouth to her neck, his searing lips making their way down to her chest.

“Don’t-” she begins breathlessly, hand finding the back of his head, running her fingers through his thick hair, tugging slightly so he looks at her “-leave a mark, Tony.”

His brown eyes are so dark they’re nearly black as he stares at her, his little nod completely meaningless-like he’s on autopilot-and she wonders if he even heard her when he begins unbuttoning her blouse, goosebumps jumping up over her skin as his callused hands brush over her shoulders, her breasts, while he works her shirt off.

“ _God_ , Pep,” he growls into her neck as he tugs the lacy red bra down, the rasp in his voice turning her on more than it has any right to. “I’d have jumped you an hour ago if I knew you were wearing this.”

His tongue swipes across her nipple and she can’t help the cry that escapes her-it’d taken her by surprise and his mouth is warm, firm, against her. He knows what he’s doing-the rumors certainly are true-and he has her flushed and gasping and grasping at him in no time and she can feel his slight grin but can’t even bring herself to get angry about it.

Pepper tightens her legs around his waist, barely rolling her hips against the bulge in his pants, wondering how far this is going-she doesn’t have a condom and she doubts he has one in the lab somewhere-before realizing she’s thinking about this logistically-not even giving a single damn that she has Aldrich, whom she’s theoretically supposed to be exclusive with. She tries to tell herself it’s because Tony’s distracting-with that talented mouth and those searching hands-but she knows it goes beyond that; she’s feeling something light years beyond lust with him and she needs to leave Aldrich before he-

“You have a tattoo?” Tony asks suddenly, glancing up at her from where his lips are traveling down her torso, kissing the skin around her navel.

“For my grandma,” she gasps as his tongue runs over it, before realizing that’s quite possibly the _least_ sexy thing she could’ve said in this moment.

His quizzical look is soft, asking the question so his mouth doesn’t have to leave the little black heart tattoo she has a few inches to the left of her right hip, on a pale stretch of skin just low enough that it was usually covered by a bikini but not low enough that the low-rise pants she’s wearing now conceal it.

“Ovarian cancer,” she explains after a moment, glancing down at the ink, which was fittingly over her right ovary-the same side her grandmother’s tumor had been on.

He almost looks like he’s going to apologize or offer her his condolences or something and she tugs at his pullover roughly, crashing their lips back together, their open mouths melding against each others as she begins pulling his top-sweater and shirt combo-off. They’re thrown across the lab somewhere and she’s vaguely aware of the fact that she has absolutely no idea where her bra or blouse is but she doesn’t particularly care when Tony’s standing between her legs, topless.

He’s more fit than she’d thought he’d be; not one of those unbelievably rigid, picture-perfect people like Aldrich, but still toned enough that it’s enough to make her admire the muscles up his arms and across his chest.

“Like what you see, Potts?” He asks, his tone light, but his expression heavy as he stares at her, his swollen lips curled up in a small, smug smirk.

“No,” she teases, running her hands up his torso, actions clearly contradicting her words as they cross his chest, both coming up to hold his face as she kisses him again.

“Impossible,” he says against her mouth, one of his hands holding the back of her neck, thumb resting next to her ear as the other gets lost in her hair, messily trying to get it out of the braid it’s been in. It takes him a few minutes, but he eventually succeeds, the red hair falling down her back, tickling her bare skin.

They pull back from their kiss at the same time, chests heaving because they both desperately need air, hands still holding the other’s face and when their eyes meet, it’s all too intimate-past desire, into passion and romance and love and mature feelings-and she can’t fucking bring herself to stop any of it.

His head drops to the nape of her neck,  teeth scraping the skin there, the slight scratch of his goatee almost tickling her as his fingers fumble with the thin belt she’s wearing, nearly ripping the button off as he yanks the zipper down.

“Lift your hips for me, baby,” Tony murmurs in her ear, and she’s not sure if the pet name or his lips on the shell of her ear makes the shiver run down her back.

She complies, leaning back on her hands slightly so he can pull her pants and underwear down, the cold metal desk shocking the skin of her bare ass when she lowers herself back onto it. With a slight start, she realizes that the holograms of Venice are still around them; the terra cotta rooves and ivy-covered walls serving as a backdrop to this highly inappropriate scene.

“You _are_ a redhead” is the first thing out of his mouth and she almost laughs but his tone is too breathy and awestruck and sweet that it dies in her throat and all she can think to do is dumbly nod.

He pushes her slightly so she begins to lie back on the desk and- _Oh_ -she suddenly realizes his plans have very little to do with him everything to do with _her_.

She’s laying down on an open book and other papers and sharpened pencils and the freezing desk, not even caring that it’s cold and uncomfortable because his lips and hands are scorching her skin, making little pleasure-filled hums leave her as he kisses his way down her body. He nips at her heart tattoo, lingering there, leaving it red and slightly bruised, the imprint of his teeth around it.

Tony’s eyes meet hers when his head makes it between her legs and she whimpers his name when his flat, hot tongue runs up her length, _his_ eyes rolling back with a moan as he licks her and it’s incredibly erotic to watch him get pleasure from something that’s meant to get her off. Aldrich never went down on her-he hated it, in fact, although he loved oral when the roles were reversed-and besides a very inexperienced boyfriend from high school, she’d never have a man eat her out before. She arches her back, hand searching for something to grab, knocking a cup of pencils over in the process, when he circles her clit a few times before backing off, kissing the inside of her thigh, his hands big and tan against her pale, thin legs.

Pepper gets the inexplicable urge to cry when his lips press against her, tongue entering her for a moment, because it feels too good-he feels too good-she can’t- _nothing_ will ever be as  _good_ as this.

She wants it to be as simple as just breaking up with Aldrich but she has bruises on her at this very moment to remind her that it’ll never be that simple-she’s gotten herself into a messy, horrible relationship and she can’t get herself out. She wishes it could be that simple-in this moment of weakness, she’s willing to admit to herself that she wants Tony around, wants _him,_ wants _this_ again and again and again-but it can’t be.

His mouth is vigorously working on her, and it’s almost embarrassing how much sound she’s making, how much she’s thrashing around, how simply not-simple this all feels. Her fingers are in his hair, guiding him though he needs very little guidance, and she can’t take her eyes off his tongue as he runs it over her, entranced by the way his dark eyebrows are furrowed in concentration and the way her wetness looks on his chin and good _God_ -

Simplicity had been shot to Hell the moment she’d caught the attention of both Aldrich and Tony.


	7. Chapter 7

“Open up,” Tony knocks on Pepper’s door frantically, hoping to _God_ she’s in there because a snitchy looking girl saw him in the hallway and in about two minutes, he could be getting kicked out of the girls dorm for the fifth time this year. He’s one wrong move away from being banned from coming within two hundred feet of the building. “Come on, please, open-”

The door swings open and Pepper’s standing there in very un-Pepper like clothes; a light blue shirt with black lettering that says ‘RHS FOOTBALL’ and some skimpy grey sleep shorts. A part of him thought she always wore those killer heels and sexy skirts and it’s hard to accept the fact that she doesn’t. 

“Tony, what're-”

He pushes past her, shutting the door quickly before anyone can see him, saying urgently, “We have a problem.”

It’s the first thing they’ve said to each other in the week and two days since the...incident in the lab. In the first day of economics together, she hadn't said a word to him so he hadn’t shown up to any of the other lectures-petty and stupid, sure, but that’s him. 

“What-we- _what_?” She asks, crossing her arms and he notices-because he can see all of her face since her hair is pulled back in a neat bun-she’s not wearing any makeup and she looks _incredibly young_ and it catches him off guard; she always acts so mature that he forgets she’s still a teenager under those adult clothes and womanly makeup. She’s-what?-eighteen? Nineteen? And she has freckles-tons of them, more than what he normally sees-ones that must usually be covered by makeup and honestly, she looks like the Wendy’s girl with lighter hair, making it weird that-

“Tony?”

“Grogan’s-the presentation-he's making me do it on my own,” he runs a hand over his face as he glances around the room, slightly unnerved by how clean it is-everything is perfectly organized, recently vacuumed, beds crisply made-its kind of freaky. It’s not one of those over-the-top dorms with a ridiculous amount of pillows and fairy lights, but there’s still feminine touches to it; fluffy throw blankets, girly rugs, neatly organized high heels, a vanity crammed into the corner, a few boy band posters.

“ _What_?” Her head tilts slightly, mouth open in surprise. “Why-what-”

“He just talked to me-he hates me, Pepper, you know that-” she gives him a glare that clearly suggests he’s insane for thinking such a thing “-he _does_ , he said-he said I’m not doing the work-”

“You _don’t_ do the work, Tony-”

“-and in order for both of us to get credit-”

“- _both of us_?!-”

“-I have to do the presentation and answer the questions he has and-”

“He’s bringing-he’s jeopardizing _my_ grade because of you-”

“Listen, I think he’s bluffing about that part, he loves you,” Tony rests his hands on her shoulders comfortingly because he can tell she's extremely unsettled by the news-leaving her grade up to _him_ isn’t exactly what the person at the top of their class wants to hear. “He’s not going to make you suffer ‘cause of me, he’s just trying to scare me into learning the stuff.”

She nods, but he suspects she doesn’t really believe him and he’s unsure of what to do for a moment so he squeezes her shoulders and kisses her cheek reassuringly, saying, “You have forty-eight hours to turn me into an economics genius, Pep, get to work.”

“I-” she stops herself before saying, almost hesitantly, “Okay.”

“Thanks.” He gives her an award-winning smile, wondering if he was Jesus or Ghandi or something in a past life because there’s no way in _Hell_ he deserved someone like her in his life. “Why don’t you dress like this more often?” He drags his eyes up from her thin, smooth thighs, over her flat stomach and the just barely-too-tight shirt before meeting her eyes, not missing the blush that spreads across her freckled cheeks; it’s easier to see when she has no makeup on. “It’s cute.”

“Because it’s thirty degrees outside,” she responds, moving around him to get her backpack from off her chair, pulling out the familiar black binder she has for world economics. “Do you want to go to the library?”

“Yeah, that’s-” he remembers the girl from the hallway “-actually, I have to hide out here for a moment, someone saw me sneak in.”

Pepper narrows her eyes at him disbelievingly but she eventually sighs and gives up on whatever counterargument she had started to form in her mind, saying, “You can sit on Natalie’s bed, but careful with the shoes-that’s a new comforter and she’ll murder you if you get it dirty.”

He nods obediently, kicking his shoes off and flopping down on the bed, the overwhelming smell of sweet flowers and... _girl_ taking his nose by storm as he turns to look at Pepper. “So, boss, what’s the presentation on?”

“It’s fairly simple,” she begins, tucking some loose hairs behind her ear as she sits criss-cross on her own bed but all Tony can see are those ridiculously long bare legs. The memory of his mouth between them, her flushed face as she writhed beneath him, and her little moans as she came undone, and her taste as he- 

“You need to listen to me, Tony,” she chastises, giving him a stern look as she continues, “You’re comparing socialism and capitalism-although it’s socialism in _theory_ , not reality-because we’ve found that socialism in reality doesn’t work out too well, otherwise the Soviet Union wouldn’t be falling and South America-”

“Socialism is just communism, right?” Tony asks, because he understands capitalism-it’s what he’s grown up with-and he has a fairly good grasp on communism.

“Yes and no,” she says, and he looks at her confused and she quickly explains, “Communism is pure politics; government regulation and ownership of everything, all of it originated with Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. Socialism is a political _and_ economic theory, and the two are closely intertwined, but socialism isn’t found exclusively in communist countries-the US has some socialistic _tendencies_ with things like welfare programs and Social Security.”

“Hmm,” he hums, not at all understanding whatever it is she just said, deciding not to mention communism during the presentation. “So what’s there to compare? One’s free and the other’s regulated. End of story.”

“There’s-” she cuts herself off, pressing her lips together in frustration and taking a deep breath. “There’s more to it than that.”

“Yeah, but it’s the main idea.”

“Yes, and as great of a vague main idea you have, you need details and examples and-”

“I don’t _care_ about them,” he whines, sitting up slightly on the bed, dangling his feet off the side. “I care about-”

“I’m well aware of that fact that you don’t care about how the world operates, but I need you to pretend you do until the presentation.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” he grins, giving her a mocking salute. 

“Stop calling me boss.”

“You got it.” He winks. “ _Boss_.”

She doesn’t give him the satisfaction of getting visibly annoyed, and instead ignores him and begins, “I’m going to give you my notes and I’m trusting that you read them and bring them back in tact, can you do that?” She gets off her bed, handing him a thick stack of papers held together with a clip at the top. 

He takes them, looking over her sloppy, loopy handwriting-he still finds it extremely amusing that someone as well put together as Pepper has some of the worst, most illegible handwriting he’s ever seen-and this is coming from an _engineering_ grad-before meeting her pressing stare as she stands in front of him.

“I’ll do it for a kiss.”

It’s comical how wide her eyes bulge and how her lips part slightly in shock before she manages to get out, “Not going to happen.”

“Then I’m not gonna do it. Unless you prefer something _more_ -” he gives her the dirtiest once over her can manage “-than a kiss.”

“I’m not going to kiss you.”

“Well, if you don’t, both our grades are going to plummet,” he shrugs noncommittally although he knows he doesn’t have it in his heart to do that to her; she’s worked too hard all damn year for him to ruin it.

“You said Grogan was bluffing.”

“I said that because you looked like you were about to lose your mind-I have no idea what he’s going to do.”

He watches as she bites her bottom lip-a horribly sexy habit she has for whenever she’s deep in thought-and crosses her arms as she contemplates the situation, weighing her options and he’s not sure if he’s more hurt by the fact that she actually thinks he’d destroy her economics grade or that it takes so much consideration to kiss him.

“How about one on the cheek?” She offers and he wants to laugh at her because there’s no _way_ she’ll believe him when he says, “Yes.”

But she nods slightly, eyeing him skeptically-which _Oh God, you should doubt me, Potts_ -before asking, “You’ll behave?”

 _Fuck no, it’s_ you.

“Scout’s Honor,” he grins when she leans forward and their faces are suddenly very close and he doesn’t even try to hide his intentions when he pulls her into him, one hand cupping her jaw, guiding their lips together.

As expected-she’s so goddamn predictable-she gives into the kiss, opening her mouth for his pressing tongue and he doesn’t waste a second tugging her into his lap and he wants to fucking cry at the feeling of it all-her thin fingers combing through his hair, the little whimper she makes when he squeezes her ass and pulls her closer, the way her soft weight presses on his thighs as she straddles him, the heat coming from her lithe body. Her hair is sleek and smooth when he lets it out of its bun, strawberry blonde locks falling down her back, the citrusy smell he’s begun to associate with her overtaking him.

He’s in too deep for her; he knows it and he doesn’t care. 

In this moment-her hot mouth, her sweet taste, her whole self on him-he doesn’t care-the world doesn’t go beyond this tiny 10x10 dorm room. There’s no one else in existence, there’s no boyfriends or morals or commitments or reputations-it’s their mouths on each other’s and truthfully, he could live like this for the rest of his life.

His mother had always said he’d know when the right girl came along because he’d want to actually respect her and _for the love of all things holy_ , it should’ve been anyone other than Aldrich Killian’s girl. It could’ve-

“Some Boy Scout you are,” Pepper mutters when she pulls back, in desperate need for air, taking deep breaths.

“Never was one,” he says lowly, watching her closely-she looks so _young_ -he can’t get over it-she’s a _kid_ -he’s a _kid-_ what the hell are they _doing_ feeling things like this?

Her long eyelashes and freckled cheeks and smooth, round, babyish face catch his attention like no one else, those blue eyes captivating him entirely, and he can’t breathe because he needs this-he needs a ‘them’-he needs _her_. The delicate arch of her eyebrows and her thin nose and little ears and perfect, slightly swollen lips and her-it’s all _her_ -and that’s all he wants. 

It’s gone way beyond sex-he wants more than that-he wants her in his life, he wants this, he wants summers and spring breaks together, wants ‘I love you’s and anniversaries and Christmases and-

“Tony?” Her voice is soft, eyelashes fluttering as she looks at him.

“Break up with Killian,” he says-nearly begs-realizing he’s probably in love with her, probably has been for a while, and a weight settles deep in his chest when she pulls back, confusion and anger evident in her eyes.

“What?”

“Break up with Killian.”

“I-” she stops, leaving her mouth hang open for a second. “I can’t.”

“Like hell you can’t,” he says, not wanting to get angry-he’s putting her in a difficult situation, it’s not _her_ fault if what he’s feeling is purely one-sided. Although the way she tilts her head as his lips fall to her neck, the way she’s so receptive to his touch, the way she’s let him do some highly inappropriate things to her, suggests she’s feeling at least _something_.

“Don’t,” she reprimands when he sucks at a spot just above her collarbone-he’s memorized it at this point-that’s more sensitive than the rest and she covers his mouth with her hand, pushing him away from her. He resists the urge to lick it like a five year old would and instead kisses her soft palm, maintaining eye contact as he does so. 

“Break up with him,” he repeats, keeping his lips close enough to her that they brush her hand as he speaks and he kisses the inside of her wrist tenderly. 

“Why?” She asks, blinking slowly at him, eyebrow barely quirking in question. “For you?”

“Well, that _is_ a stellar suggestion, Miss Potts,” he says, giving her a lingering kiss, noting that she does not pull away from it even the slightest-in fact, he’s the one that ends it because he needs to breathe.

“So-what?-we can sleep together? You want me to end a relationship I’ve been in for a few years so that we-”

“If I only wanted sex from you, Pepper, you’d be under me right now,” he promises, gauging her reaction closely-she acts like she doesn’t trust his motives, like she doesn’t believe that there are genuine emotions involved with this, but there’s also a fear in her eyes that comes from uncertainty, not distrust.

“I’m not going to cheat on-”

“Then what the _fuck_ happened in the lab?” Tony asks snippily, holding her hips firmly so she can’t get out of this-they hadn’t talked about it but boy, did they need to.

“That’s-was-a-” she stumbles over the words and he has to press his lips together to keep himself from saying anything too incredibly vulgar.

They hadn’t gotten any farther than his mouth between her legs; Bruce Banner had come in-thank God for JARVIS’s alert-after about an hour. In that hour, he’d learned every possible quirk she had when it came to the details of her...intimacy. She _did_ have a thing for pain and he had barely managed not to laugh when it was confirmed because he _fucking knew it_ -but predicting something and managing to send her over the edge simply by grabbing her hips in a rough, bruising hold were two incredibly different things.

When Bruce came in, Pepper had managed to pull herself together enough to not look like sex on a stick-although she did walk a little wobbly and Tony tried not to be too proud because he’d given her a solid hour’s worth of attention-by the end, she was so sensitive a well-aimed _breeze_ probably could’ve made her come.

Tony, on the other hand, had a-call it a kink, whatever- _thing_ for getting people off-he got off on getting people off-and after a few strategically placed clipboards and tables, he’d left the lab to relieve himself in the bathroom while Bruce stayed behind, suspecting absolutely nothing.

“It was what, Pepper?” He challenges, looking down at her lips, the plump redness of them incredibly enticing. 

“A mistake,” she breathes against his mouth and he barely hums in response, kissing her slowly.

“Is that what this is, too?” He murmurs, holding her face in his right hand, thumb brushing against her cheek, and he doesn’t miss the way she tilts her head into his palm. “We keep doing this and you keep saying you don’t like it but you don’t stop coming back.”

She doesn’t have a response to that so they choose to stare at each other for a moment, him still holding her face, a hot flash of emotion shooting through him the longer they stay in this position. 

She’s perfect-makeup free and unbrushed hair and all-and it’s not fucking _fair_ -he’s always gotten any girl he desires and the one he wants won’t-

“I can’t break up with him,” she says, looking down, her eyelashes just barely touching his thumb. 

“Why not?” He asks, not even caring that his tone and hold on her is now desperate. 

“He’d-” she stops suddenly, eyebrows slightly furrowed, a heavy look on her face, as if she’s contemplating giving away government secrets or something. “Tony, I’m trying to make it work with him-I...this is fun, but Aldrich is permanent.”

“I could be permanent,” he offers, knowing it’s a gateway statement to talk about their feelings and he doesn’t care at this point-he’d fucking _propose_ if she’d leave Killian for him. 

“No you wouldn’t, you’d-”

He kisses her again, crashing their mouths together, bruising his lips against hers, his hand moving from her face to the back of her head, not wanting her to pull away and continue to doubt him. He knows she has a valid reason to question his intentions-he’s the one who created his reputation-but he hadn’t even had sex since before Christmas break-since their first kiss. He’s tried and he’d gone to a few parties but he’d begun comparing every girl to Pepper and no one else sized up-it’s as simple as that. 

“Tony, listen to me,” she says when he pulls back. 

“Listening,” he responds reluctantly, recognizing that tone he typically uses for letting down one night stands easy, playing with the hem of the soft shorts she’s wearing. 

“I think you’re great, I do-you’ve-you’re,” she hesitates. “If I didn’t have Aldrich, if I had nothing to lose, I might consider it but I _do_ have-”

“If you loved him you wouldn’t be here right now,” he says lowly, because it’s a bullshit reason to not want to be with him. 

She tenses slightly against him, an unrecognizable expression on her face as she says faintly, “There’s more than love between him and I.”

The sudden weight to her words, the way she almost looks _sad_ , unsettles him and he pulls her closer, the question of just how gentlemanly Killian is popping back in his head. 

It would certainly explain why she says “I can’t break up with him” rather than “I won’t break up with him.”

“Pepper, does-has-” she meets his eyes and he finds himself unable to just ask ‘has Killian ever hit you?’ for whatever pathetic, wimpy reason. “Is he-are you two doing okay?”

“He’s...he has every reason not to trust me lately,” she responds guiltily and he wants to kiss her, make her forget about it, but that would be fairly counterproductive. “He’s always been jealous but you just set him off more than-”

“We haven’t even seen each other-”

“You left a mark,” she says softly, her eyes flicking down for a moment before they meet his again, almost nervous as she continues, “It’s-from the lab-my tattoo-he saw the bruise and I really don’t think he believed me when I said I hit it on a desk.”

The memory of that little heart tattoo she has low on her abdomen, the way it tasted, the way she gasped and arched her back when he’d left a hickey over it-he couldn't feel bad about Killian seeing it when he had such great images associated with it. 

“So break up with him,” he says for what feels like the hundredth time, nodding slightly, kissing her beneath her jaw on her pulse point, nuzzling the soft skin there. 

“I’m not going to be some-some _conquest_ for you, Tony, I-”

“You’re not,” he assures, moving away from her neck, tilting his head slightly like he’s going to kiss her before deciding against it and resting his forehead on hers. “You’re _not_ , Pepper, I swear, I-”

“You’re just saying that.” 

“No, I mean it-I-” _How do you convince someone you’re not lying when they think you are?_ Innocent until proven guilty is a load of shit; it’s presumed guilty until proven guilty. “It’s different with you.”

Her eyes shut and she shakes her head slightly, pulling away from him, brushing her hair out of her face as she says, “It’d be so much easier if you were an asshole, I’d know how to deal with you then.”

Tony isn’t really sure how to interpret that so he kisses her, mumbling “I’ll be whatever you want me to be” against her mouth.

His hands rest on high up on her thighs, fingers just barely inching their way up her shorts to border on inappropriate, and one of her hands holds the side of his face, the soft pressure of it feeling too goddamn good. He feels the vibration from little hum of approval she makes in the back of her throat when he pulls her unbearably close, their torsos pressed together, her-

“Am I interrupting something?” Natalie’s snarky, raspy voice makes them jump apart, Pepper scrambling to get off his lap, standing next to him uneasily as he grins  between the redheads.

“I’m sorry-”

“We were-”

They both start at the same time as Natalie stares at them like a mom who just caught her kids in the middle of a lie.

“Oh no, by all means, go ahead and use my bed to have sex,” she says, shutting the door behind her, tossing her student ID onto her desk.

“We weren’t-” Pepper begins, a nervous, pink blush spreading across her face and Tony can’t keep himself from staring. Her ears are tinted a downright adorable shade of pink as her face flushes with embarrassment and he wonders to himself why the hell he loved the way she looked when she gets flustered-it’s not fair to him that anyone looks so good, ever. “There was-”

“Is this some sort of progression I haven’t heard about in your relationship or are you still sneaking around behind Killian’s back?” Natalie asks, hanging her coat up on a hook as she looks at Pepper.

“I’m-no, Aldrich and I are still-”

Natalie looks sorely disappointed by that-which throws Tony off entirely because she’d despised him since they first met-and she interrupts Pepper with “You’re getting brave if you’re inviting him in here.”

“I didn’t invite him-”

“We were doing economics,” Tony says, trying to help Pepper out because Natalie almost seems angry with her.

“Yeah, it sure looked like it,” Natalie responds wryly, looking at him for a moment. “You’re still on my bed, Stark.”

He gets up, finding his shoes that he’d kicked off what felt like ages ago, holding the thick stack of notes in his hand, waving them at Pepper, assuring her, “I’ll read them tonight.”

She nods, crossing her arms and resting them on her chest tightly. 

“Do you want me to turn around so you can have some heartfelt, goodbye lovers kiss?” Natalie asks innocently. 

“We’re good,” Pepper says shortly, glaring at her roommate pointedly. “Tony’s leaving-”

“Looked ten minutes away from coming a moment ago,” Natalie bites and Tony can’t help the laugh that escapes him, wondering if she knows about what happened in the lab because girls tell each other _everything_. 

“Natalie-” Pepper warns, head tilted slightly in exasperation. 

“I’m gonna-” Tony points at the door behind him somewhat awkwardly. “Go.”

“Can’t convince her to leave that ass of a boyfriend, either?” Natalie asks him as his hand touches the door knob. 

 _Ass of a boyfriend_?

“ _Natalie_ -”

“I’ll-” he glances between the two, feeling as if he’s missing something extremely important, wondering if he’s done something wrong, meeting Pepper’s eyes for a moment “-see you in class.”

Tony gets out of the room before he can make Pepper any more uncomfortable by simply being there and briskly walks down the hall, managing to go unseen until he makes it to the stairwell and two girls-he’d seen them before, somewhere, maybe even sleep with one or both of them-give him a knowing look as he high tails it down the steps and out the back door.

When he makes it outside and onto the sidewalk, he takes a deep breath of relief, realizing with a little, heart-wrenching twist that he can smell Pepper on the collar of his T-shirt. It’s faint but it’s there-that mix of vanilla and fruit and sweetness he can’t get enough of-and he holds her notes tighter, resisting the urge to bury his nose in the fabric and breathe her scent in.

He’s got it bad-he’s got it _really fucking bad._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long but I've been busy af and I've been working other fanfics bc this slow burn is killing me, I needed to write some stories where they weren't two idiots lol Anyway, enjoy :)

It’s hot-it’s too hot. 

Pepper can’t stand it-it’s March in _Massachusetts_ for Christ’s sake, it’s supposed to still be snowing or something-but inside this stupid frat house it’s at least one hundred degrees and she’s somewhat drunk and Aldrich is constantly breathing down her back and it’s all too hot. 

He’d convinced-and by _convinced_ , she means forced-her to come to this party at Boston College because some friend of his was part of the fraternity and there would be “a lot of alcohol and easy girls” and it’d be “fun.”

Pepper had nothing against parties or quick, wild sex in bathrooms or wild dancing, but she didn’t particularly enjoy music blasting so loud she could feel it in her bones and groping hands from a bunch of horny jocks. The entire situation-underage drinking, bongs in every room, sneaking in teenage girls, groups of high frat bros swarming the fresh meat in packs-is a _Law and Order: SVU_ episode waiting to happen. 

“Hey babe,” Aldrich says lowly in her ear, appearing out of nowhere to hold her from behind, a possessive hand resting on her hip as the other grips her arm. “Follow me.”

She meets his eyes, the hazy blue in them proving that he is drunk-not just a little buzzed like she is-and she nods obediently; he’s always been an angry drunk and the last thing she wants to do is make a scene where there are tons of people watching.  

He tugs her arm, roughly pulling her through the sweaty crowd until they make it onto the back porch, the crisp air cooling the fever that had been eating her alive. 

“Stark’s here,” Aldrich says, motioning towards a group of people who’re gathered by the pool, Tony in the center. He’s in a pair of black dress pants, held up with a shiny black leather belt, and a maroon silk shirt that’s unbuttoned to welcome curious eyes. 

Hanging off his arm is Maya-Aldrich’s chemistry partner-and Pepper can’t explain the ridiculous feeling of anger and almost _jealousy_ that shoots through her as she watches the pretty brunette whisper something in his ear, a giggle following that is most definitely not innocent. 

Pepper glances at Aldrich, unsure as to why he’s showing her Tony-he _hates_ him-and certainly not sure as to how he wants her to react. 

“Not gonna say anything?” He asks, now seeming irritated with her and she takes a slight step back from him. 

“I-” she stops, pausing, trying to quickly think of something to say without seeming stupid or bitchy. “I see him.”

“He’s with _Maya_ ,” Aldrich says, blonde eyebrows furrowed in frustration and Pepper jumps when he turns to her suddenly, one of his hands grabbing the rail next to her arm, obviously not happy with her silence.

“I see him and Maya,” she squeaks when Aldrich leans closer to her, his large frame threatening and downright terrifying-normally, he'd never, ever made a scene in public because he didn’t want to risk anyone even _suspecting_ there’s something wrong with their relationship, but right now he’s drunk and there are very few MIT students around-he’s unpredictable. 

“What the _fuck_ is his problem?” He growls and she watches the hand that he runs through his hair warily-it’s his right hand-he’s agitated-he’s not thinking straight-saying she’s _tense_ right now is an understatement.

“I-I don’t know,” she touches his arm gently, trying to diffuse the situation, “Let’s go back inside-he’s not inside, baby-let’s-”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he snarls, yanking his arm out from under her.

“I’m sorry, I-”

“He won’t stop hitting on my girls.”

Pepper isn’t quite sure what exactly he means by ‘my girls,' if that meant he and Maya were as inappropriate of study partners as she and Tony were, but she can’t even bring herself to feel bad about it. She had good as cheated on him multiple occasions-she didn’t deserve to feel bad about the possibility of him doing the same.

They’re both shit at this; bad relationships stem from bad people.

“Tony hits on everyone,” she finally says, watching Tony as he wraps an arm around Maya’s waist.

Aldrich mutters something she can’t hear and pushes off of the railing, making it down the steps shakily and Pepper follows closely behind him, wary of what he’d do, mentally preparing to break up a fight because she knows that look on his face. He's angry and he packed a punch-somehow even especially so when drunk-and Tony wouldn’t be able to take it gracefully. 

“Killian! Pepper,” Tony grins, the sparkle in his eyes from whatever liquor is in his cup and Pepper hopes to _God_ he doesn’t say anything too provocative. 

“Stark,” Aldrich says, standing tall in front of Tony and the heat from earlier comes back-she doesn’t like Tony and Aldrich being within a mile of each other. 

“Aldrich,” Maya smiles, coming out from underneath Tony’s arm and giving Killian a kiss on the cheek. 

“Maya,” he responds, his hand finding the small of her back and Tony gives Pepper an odd look when she doesn’t even attempt to look hurt or confused by her boyfriend’s obvious preference of someone else. 

“Virginia, hi,” Maya says, looking at her with a happiness that’s faked and incredibly plastic.

The whole scene-the extreme temperature, the twisted feelings, the fact that Aldrich had an inkling of an idea of what’s going on between her and Tony, the fact that she’s sure he’s not exactly faithful either, the rising hatred-feels like the part from The Great Gatsby when Gatsby and the Buchanans have lunch together.

There’s no trust, no love, it’s all disdain and tension and she can’t handle it.

She wants to get _out_ of here.

“Hi,” she returns politely. “Enjoying the party?”

“Your cup is empty,” Aldrich begins, looking down at the empty red solo cup in Maya’s hand. “Let’s go get you a drink.”

“Aldrich, no really, your girlfriend is-”

“Come on,” he slurs as he glares at Tony, who looks as if he’s going argue-or do something stupid-before he tugs Maya away from them, leaving Pepper alone with the very man that he constantly bitched about. 

“What the hell was _that_?” Tony asks after a moment, before eyeing her tiny black dress-a scrap of cloth that was strapless and only covered from the top of her breasts to just under her ass-appreciatively. “And what are you _wearing_?”

“I’m-I need to find him-he’s going to-” Pepper thinks of the thousand different routes tonight can go and almost all of them end violently-she needs to find Aldrich and get out of here before he can hurt someone else. “I need to go.”

Tony catches her arm as she walks past him, making her stumble slightly in her ridiculously high heels that Aldrich had picked out for her earlier, and he says, lowly, head angled slightly so that he manages to look unbearably sexy, all serious and dominant and controlling, “If you think I’m gonna let you out of my sight dressed like that, you’re out of your mind, Potts.”

She doesn’t want to be around Tony-they’d been an awkward mess since he came to her dorm room.

He’d managed to pull off the presentation in Grogran’s with flying colors, earning them the highest grade in the class, and it had taken every bit of willpower she possessed to not run up to him after it was done and hug or kiss or thank him until she was blue in the face. He knew he’d done well because he’d come to class the next day and sat by her with a little smirk as they watched another group’s presentation, kissed her cheek, and reminded her to leave Killian. 

She _couldn’t_ leave Aldrich. 

“Go find Maya,” she retorts, and it comes out harsher than she’d intended and he grins at her smugly.

“Oh, you noticed that, did you?”

“I-no, I didn’t-Aldrich brought me out here. I was inside.”

“Uh-huh, right. Speaking of Killian, where is he?” Tony glances at the door he’d gone through as a _morbidly_ drunk couple stumbles out. “What’s his thing for Maya?”

“I don’t know,” she says, brushing her hair off her back-she’d worn it down and now it’s sticking to her skin with sweat. 

“You think they’ve ever…” He trails off, wiggling his eyebrows mischievously. 

“I’m sure it’s no worse than we’ve done,” she responds shortly, not wanting to hear him scrutinize her relationship when she's 50% of the issue. “Stop trying to find problems with him.”

“I don’t see why you don’t just break up if neither of you are happy,” he shrugs, his tone more concerned than she expected and when she meets his eyes, she finds they’re brown and clear-he’s not drunk-he’s probably barely buzzed-unless he’s really good at acting not drunk.

“Of course you-”

“Come on, let’s go dance,” he says suddenly, pulling her forward so that her shoes are almost touching his. 

“No, absolutely not.”

Aldrich may be able to fool around with Maya, but he would lose his mind if he saw her and Tony dancing-he’d probably be livid that they’re even talking right now.

“You know you wanna,” he teases as his eyes drop to her lips, their bodies dangerously close.

“I do not, Tony.”

“You’re so full of shit.” He sounds incredibly serious, despite the way he grins and laughs, and she can’t breathe-the heat from earlier crawling up her neck-wondering how he managed to read her like a goddamn book-why _he_ is able to see through her.

It’s not fair that Tony Stark, of all people, be the one who’s so perceptive of her emotions.

“I am not,” she defends, a voice in the back of her mind telling her to move away from him because he’s tilting his head slightly-a warning sign that a kiss is coming-but she can’t bring herself to do it. “You need to-”

The little ‘mmphf’ sound she makes as his mouth lands on hers is almost comical, but the needy grip he has on her arms is anything but-it’s unbelievably real- _this_ is unbelievably real. There’s too much desperation to it, too much emotion in his eyes, too many pleas that have passed those talented, soft lips, and it should feel wrong but she can't feel bad about anything that feels this _good_.

He pulls away before he even gets their tongues involved and his eyes are nearly black as he demands, “Dance- _now_.”

She follows behind him, buzzed and woozy-from the couple shots of vodka she’d had, definitely not the kiss-until they make it inside, where he pulls her into him, his hand shamelessly resting on her ass as he pushes through the crowd, sweaty people jumping and dancing around them, flashing lights from a stupid disco ball, rap music with an ungodly amount of bass making her bones vibrate. 

When Tony stops, he gives her a hungry look that makes her heart skip a beat, but it’s gone as soon as it comes and then he’s spinning her around, dropping his mouth to the nape of her neck as they begin to dance. The song playing has a relaxed beat and they’re moving just slow enough that it’s incredibly inappropriate-an erotic, sensual dance that’s so much more than the typical bump and grind of a college party-and she leans back into him against her better judgement.

He feels too good behind her, his presence somehow both comforting and unsettling, one of his arms wrapped around her waist as his lips kiss her skin, soft and exploring, nose brushing her. His chest is firm against her back-not rock hard solid like Aldrich-and the slight tickle of his goatee is downright delicious as he moves his mouth over her skin. They’re impossibly close and it’s-

“Admit it-you were _jealous_ , Pep.” His breath is hot in her ear, body pressed against hers as they continue to dance. “You were jealous of Maya.”

“Was not,” she argues, knowing she’s lying, knowing he can’t hear her. 

His hands grip her hips, pulling her ass into him, and she can feel the scorching wetness of his tongue on her neck, making her tilt her head away, opening the area for his mouth, because she can't get enough of him. 

It’s too damn hot-he’s like an inferno as he presses against her, burning her skin as he touches her-it's too hot and it feels too good and for the moment, she doesn’t even care that Aldrich is lingering around somewhere, maybe even watching the whole thing from afar.

“Wanna know a secret?” Tony asks, his teeth tugging slightly at her ear and she turns her head slightly to meet his eyes and good _God_ she shouldn’t have done that. He looks ridiculously, unjustifiably sexy with those smoldering dark eyes and sweaty, tan face and damp curls falling onto his forehead-she imagines what he’d look like moving above her, thrusting into-

“I did it on purpose,” he says, looking at her, their eyes locked as their bodies continue to dance and people scream around them, but it’s turned into faint, dull background noise. “I knew you’d see it-I knew you’d get jealous.”

She doesn’t-can’t-have a response to that and he slides one hand from her hip up to her face, cupping her jaw, angling her head back as he gives her slow, hot kiss, tasting nothing but scotch on him. 

He pulls away abruptly, a little grin quirking his lip up as he asks, “Wanna know another secret?”

Pepper can’t do anything but stare, wondering how the rest of the world manages to slip away when he’s talking to her-how they can manage to have a quiet moment with so many drunk people around and obnoxious music blasting through speakers-and missing the feel of his hand on her cheek. 

“I think I’m in love with you, Potts.”

His voice is almost dejected and she can’t breathe-it’s so damn _hot_ -and he’s so close to her-she doesn’t know what to say-he can’t love her-he _can’t_ -he's drunk-but isn’t that supposed to make people honest?-he doesn’t know what love is-but he's certainly not faking the look on his face-she isn’t even-

“You don’t have to love me back.” His smile is sad, a certain wryness to it that makes her heart twist-out of _sympathy_ , she tries to tell herself, not because what he's feeling is mutual. “But I think you do and-”

She kisses him because he needs to stop talking; a frat house party, in the middle of a dance floor, is the last place they should have this conversation-if they ever should have this conversation. 

He turns her around so they’re not kissing over her shoulder, his hands remaining on her hips as she throws her arms over his shoulders, both of them pulling each other closer and they probably look disgusting, but everyone’s too drunk to care and half of them are doing the same thing; no one would notice just another couple making out.

Somehow-she’s not sure if they had been moving while they kissed or what-he manages to find a wall to shove her up against, the wood cool on her skin as his mouth travels down her neck, leaving a trail of sloppy, wet kisses. She can barely form a thought when she feels his teeth on her collarbone because he’s _drunk_ , he has no _right_ to still be unfathomably good at this.

 _Break up with him_.

Tony’s voice sounds through her mind and she wants to cry in frustration because he’s perfect-he _feels_ perfect-he’s probably not lying when he says he loves her-she wants this so bad-but she can’t have any of it.

If leaving Aldrich was as simple as _leaving_ him, she would’ve done it ages ago but she’s trapped, stuck-he’d already manipulated and abused her way too long-there was a rational part of her brain that recognized that, somewhat, but she had come to him with a predisposition for self-deprecation and he’d only made the tendency stronger. She couldn’t bring herself to leave him, he’d threatened and beaten and scared her enough that it would _never_ be that simple, and he was the first man to ever love her and she’s sure there’s some psychological explanation-undoubtedly with its roots in her Daddy issues-but she just _couldn’t_ do it. She’d never had a father figure, she didn’t have a brother, there was never a permanent man in her life to help shape her and she couldn’t give up on the first guy who’d really taken notice of her. She had-

“I can hear you thinking,” Tony says lowly in her ear, and she opens her eyes to meet his, his pupils blown so wide that she can’t even see any brown. 

“I-”

“ _Stop."_ One of his hands cups her jaw and she damn near bursts when he winks at her as he leans forward, lips brushing hers when he murmurs, “Just feel, Pep.”

She’s _feeling,_ alright-she’s feeling everything wrong with this-the way she craves his touch is entirely unacceptable and the way she just _lets_ him wrap his tongue around hers isn’t too bright and the way it _feels_ isn’t ever going to happen ever again in her life-this is it.

Tony Stark, feeling her up at some frat house party, is the-sexual, emotional, physical, you name it-peak of her entire life and it’s not _fair_.

 _I think I’m in love with you, Potts_.

The very idea of him feeling that same terrifying, life-changing, dread-inducing, smile-sparking, exciting rush of emotion that courses through her every time their eyes meet for too long is enough for her to give up and give in to the kiss a little more.

Her hands, which had been resting uselessly on his chest, come up to hold his face and he’s hot-it’s too _hot_ -and he makes some primal sound between a growl and a grunt, redoubling his efforts and pressing her into the wall with more force. It’s just barely on the verge of pain and it feels so fucking good and he’s so alive against her, a fire and passion neither had ever felt with anyone else burning them up, sweat beading down their skin, and that only makes it even hotter, makes him look hotter, makes-

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” Tony breathes when he pulls away, his hand still on her cheek, palm soft against her feverish skin, their lips nearly touching. 

Pepper blinks slowly, always and forever unsure as to how she should respond during these strangely intimate moments, and she glances around, taking in the slutty, easy girls dancing with a bunch of cocky hunks, a few of them-

Her blood runs cold, a flash of the most pure, raw fear she’s ever felt freezing her on the spot when she meets Aldrich’s steely, furious blue eyes from across the room. 


	9. Chapter 9

Pepper’s not in class on Monday.

At first, Tony chalks it up her skipping. 

But she hadn’t missed a class ever before; she certainly wouldn’t blatantly _skip_ one.

Next, he blames it on a sickness. 

But she hadn’t missed class because she was sick; she’d written their midterm paper while she had a fever.

Then, he tries to tell himself that things are awkward between them-maybe because his drunk ass had told her he loved her.

But she hadn’t missed class because of him; she’d shown up every time they had an inappropriate encounter.

Finally, he has to conclude that something happened to her-something between now and the party Saturday night-because there was no way in Hell Pepper would ever let herself miss a class and everyone under the Sun knew it. Even Professor Grogan had eyed her empty seat with a concerned, worried look.

After that, Tony’s world tunnel visions to Pepper and the thousand possibilities as to why she’s not here.

She’d acted strange at the party-one minute they’d been making out as he had pinned her against a wall and then she’d tensed suddenly, told him she needed to go, disappeared into the crowd, and never returned. Initially, he'd tried to find her but then he'd run into Maya, who was also looking for Aldrich, so he'd given up and assumed they had left together and then he left-there was no point at staying at the party anymore if Pepper wasn't there.

His first thought was that maybe she and Killian got into a car crash because they were both drunk and Boston College was too far away for it to be an enjoyable walk to MIT, they had to have gotten back in some sort of vehicle. 

But he wanted to think Natalie would’ve told him that-that she would’ve tracked him down and told him where Pepper is, what hospital she’s at, what happened to her. She knew they were close, she should’ve told him.

It couldn’t have been a mugging or something, either-he’d had JARVIS run through every crime reported in the last seventy-two hours within thirty miles of Cambridge- _nothing_ with ties to her or Killian. It wasn’t an incident on campus, either, because he would’ve heard about an assault if one happened; college gossip was one of the fastest moving communication systems Tony had ever encountered.

Which means that something had happened to both of them-or just to _her_ , that’s what he cared about.

And since he didn’t feel like knocking on Killian’s door-or finding it for that matter-it left him to go looking for Natalie.

\---

“Where’s Pepper?” Tony asks the second Natalie opens her dorm door, the redhead in a tank and yoga pants. 

“She’s sick,” she replies immediately, closing the door in his face, but he manages to stick his foot out and keep it from shutting entirely. “Stark, if you don’t leave right now, I’ll call security and-”

He shoves his shoulder into the door to open it and Natalie jumps out of the way and he’s able to look in on their room. It'd been freakishly clean the only other time he’d seen it, but now there’s rubbing alcohol and gauze pads and medical tape strewn about the place, bloody tissues in the trash can, and the small form of Pepper curled up in her bed under the blankets. 

 _This is bad, this is really bad_.

“What the hell happened?” He asks, practically growls, at Natalie, who is starting to push against him in an attempt to make him leave. The secretiveness-the wary glance from Natalie-the sheer amount of medical supplies laying out everywhere-is setting off warning bells.

“I’m serious, Tony, you need to go,” she warns, the plea in her raspy voice catching him off guard. 

“What happened? How bad is it?” The look on her face says it all. “Natalie, what _happened_?” He asks, pushing past her and approaching Pepper’s bed. 

“You decided to make out with her at a party she went to with her boyfriend, Tony, _that’s_ what happened,” she bites, panic evident in her voice as Pepper moves beneath the sheets, a little mumble coming from under the comforter, her form moving slowly. “I’m serious, leave, _now_.”

 _Her boyfriend saw-he’s jealous-you think he’s abusive-he_ saw _-he knows-_

“Did Killian-” his question dies in his throat when Pepper’s head pokes out from underneath the blankets, her right eye a nasty, painful purple, her lip split, and temple bruised and Tony blinks a few times, wanting to pinch himself, wanting confirmation that this isn’t some sick nightmare.

She freezes, looking like a deer caught in headlights as she meets his eyes, glancing at Natalie as if needing reassurance that she’s not hallucinating. 

“He barged in, I couldn’t make him leave-” she begins as Pepper sits up, removing the blanket that’s been covering her. 

“What are you doing here?” Pepper’s voice is hoarse and with a sinking feeling, Tony notices the bright blue handprints around her thin neck, dark against her pale skin, effectively ruining any chance that this could’ve been from a car accident or something innocent-anything but Killian.

Her hair is up in a ponytail and she’s in a touristy, blue and white Cape May, New Jersey t-shirt with grey flannel pants and she’s not wearing any makeup and there’s a dark ring from a few sleepless nights under her eye that isn’t black and she looks so fucking _young_ -she can dress up and act mature but good God, she's still a _kid_ -an image of innocence ruined by angry hands. 

“I-you...didn’t come to class,” he says, his voice embarrassingly soft, not taking his eyes off her face, not able to look away-she’s a _mess_. There’s a lot of bruising, a lot of trauma, a lot more to this than he’d ever initially thought. 

“So you broke into my dorm room?” She asks, wincing as she sits up, bruises and handprints and ice packs covering what skin he can see. 

“I was worried,” he defends, taking a step forward. “What the hell did Killian _do_?”

Tony’s not quite sure what to make of the look she gives him or the fact that she doesn’t immediately try to defend her boyfriend-try to deny it-try to put up a fight of some kind.

“He saw us at the-” she shifts slightly and a pain-filled gasp escapes her “-the party.”

 _You decided to make out with her at a party she went to with her boyfriend, Tony,_ that’s _what happened_. Natalie’s words replay through his mind and he’s torn between wanting to destroy Killian atom by atom and wanting to kill himself from the guilt-he should’ve caught on-he should’ve realized _that’s_ why she ran away from him at the party-he should’ve asked her a long time ago.

“I’m sorry-I...we-”

“It’s not your fault,” she assures, a sad smile on her bruised face, straining the skin by the cut on her lip. “Should’ve left him the first time he ever hit me.”

Tony stares at her, wondering what more there is to this story, how correct he’d been with his assumptions about Killian, and he looks around to find Natalie, only to realize she must’ve slipped out to let them talk. 

“What-why...why didn’t you tell me?” He asks, sitting down on Natalie’s bed, letting Pepper have her space. 

“Would you’ve believed me?” She asks, a certain dejected quality to her tone that makes him want to scoop her up in his arms and hold her forever. 

“Yeah,” he answers after a beat, hurt by the way she looks at him in shock.

Did she think that lowly of _him_ or did she think that lowly of _herself_?

“You’re saying that now but-”

“No, I would’ve, Pep, I swear, I would’ve. I thought...I knew there was something up and…” he pauses, asking, “Were you ever going to tell me?”

Her little nod makes his heart constrict painfully because he’d been _so close_ to where she needed him-to feeling trusted enough-and she mumbles, playing with the sheets in front of her, “I came close a few times and then...I don’t know, Tony, I just didn’t say anything. I really didn’t think you’d believe me.”

“But Natalie did, right? How long’s she known?”

“She-it’s different-we share a room, seeing so many bruises all the time made it hard to not believe me.”

“Why didn’t _she_ say anything?” He asks, an angry voice in the back of his mind cursing Natalie for acting so protective and overbearing when _she knew_ and didn’t do a damn thing. 

“I told her not to-you don’t know Aldrich, he’s…” she trails off, looking lost and suddenly very, very small. “He’s threatened a lot of things, Tony, I can’t...just _leave_.”

“But what now? You’re not staying with him,” he says, eyes nearly popping out of his head when she gives him an incredulous look. “Pepper, you’re _not_ staying with him.”

“You don’t-” her voice is tight “-you have no idea what he’s capable of.”

“Look what he did, he’s-” suddenly, a little bit of assumption clicks “-he’s done this before, hasn’t he? _This_ -” he gestures to her face and body “-has happened before?”

Her absolutely petrified look is enough confirmation and his blood is practically boiling at the thought of _this_ -of her going through _this_ -and hiding it all and laughing off her bruises and smiling strained smiles and wincing because she’s in an unfathomable amount of pain and she’s too scared to tell anyone and so much clicks-the odd ticks she had that he could never really explain-at once and all he feels is blinding fury. He had suspected but he’d never _asked_ and he’d never pressed her when he knew she was lying because he didn’t want it to be reality but she was the one living it-she needed the help and he was too much of a pussy to hear the truth.

“ _Jesus fucking Christ_ , Pep, I thought maybe he’d shove you around every now and then, but he _beat_ you- _he beat you_ -and you didn’t think that was worth telling someone?!”

He’s tried not to yell, he’s tried really fucking hard, but her blindness to the severity of the situation, _his_ blindness to the severity of previous situations, sends him over the edge.

“I told Natalie,” she says quietly, eyes focused downward.

“ _Natalie didn’t do shit_!” He shouts, wanting her to fight back, wanting her to get angry with him, wanting that fire in her eyes, not liking this hollow shell of a girl in front of him-Pepper’s always supposed to be strong and ready to argue.

 _This_ Pepper terrifies him. 

“I-Tony, I’m sorry,” she apologizes, big blue eyes meeting his, uncertainty and fear evident. “I-”

“Don’t apologize-don’t you fucking apologize for _anything_.” He runs his hand through his hair, wanting to yank it all out, wanting to pull her into a hug, wanting to tear Killian apart. “I should be apologizing-Natalie should be apologizing-”

“It’s not her fault, I told her not to-to-it’s my fault, Tony, it’s my fault.” She sounds like she believes herself so earnestly that all he sees is red; sadness takes its shape in various ways and for him, unbelievable anger seemed to be the form of the day. 

“It’s not-you’re the victim here, Pepper! Don’t you see that?! He _abused_ you-you realize what he did was wrong, right?! You know you didn’t deserve it-you know you deserve the _world_ , right?!” He feels like crying and he’s not sure why-probably because of the confusion and conflict and hurt on her face-probably because he fucking loves her and she seems terrified of him.

“I…” She pauses, continuing uncertainly, probably only saying it because he’s told her to, “know that.”

“You’re smarter than this, Pepper,” he says, suddenly realizing he’s not doing much to help her; she’s obviously scared and hurt and emotionally abused on top of the blatant physical evidence-him _yelling_ at her certainly isn’t helping anything. “I’m sorry-I…”

“No, I’m sorry-I should’ve told you because then-”

“Okay, no...no more apologies, okay?” He sighs heavily, eyes locked on the two handprints that encase her neck, wondering how much force it’d take-how long Killian had held her like that-if he’d meant to kill her or scare her-before the image of her thin body being held up by nothing but Killian’s hands, feet thrashing and hands clawing at his grasp to let her go, gets stuck in his mind. He won’t ever unsee it. “Have you been to a hospital?”

“I don’t need one,” she assures, not meeting his eyes. “He never-he...knows where to-to not break anything.”

Tony feels sick to his stomach at the thought that-not only has this happened before-but it’s happened enough that Killian had _perfected_ his moves as to not hurt her too severely. Did that imply he _had_ broken her bones? Did she-

“Tony?” Her voice is tender.

“I can have JARVIS scan you,” he offers, wondering what’s wrong with her torso-why she has ice packs there. Ribs? Stomach? Hip?

“No-no, it’s really okay-just a few days and I’ll be back on my feet,” she says it like it’s some well-rehearsed plan, like she’s done this a thousand times before, and he doesn’t know quite how to cope with that.

“Is...has he always been like this?” He asks, watching her bruised face closely as she processes the question.

“Not...always,” she hesitates, meeting his eyes, the blue making his heart stop and he’s disgusted with himself-she’s been horribly abused and all he can think is that her eyes are _perfect_. “It went on longer than it should’ve-I wouldn’t...I didn’t think it was as simple as leaving him-it’s not as simple as that-he’s...I realized I was too far in way too late.”

“You don’t…” he trails off, watching her tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, the slight pout of her bruised lips making him sick-Killian had done this because of him-he’d seen them kissing-he’d nearly killed her because Tony thought it’d be _fun_ to dance. “You don’t blame yourself, do you? You know-”

“There’s two people in our relationship, Tony, I wasn’t faultless-I-I...messed around with you, a lot of his jealousy had valid-”

“That means you break things off,” he scoffs, giving her a pointed look. “You don’t _hit_ women.”

“That’s not-”

“No, you don’t hit women-ever.”

“You shouldn’t cheat on people, either, Tony, he had every right to-”

“He had _no_ fucking right,” Tony snarls, surprising himself with the downright viciousness in his voice. 

“I _cheated_ on him-I deserved-”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Pepper,” he warns, not wanting her to say that she deserved it. “Don’t you _dare_.”

“I did, I _did._ ” Her voice quivers slightly and the tears welling up in her guilty, hurt blue eyes catches him off guard-he’s never seen her cry-he’s always thought she’s the most resilient person on the planet and nothing could bring her down.

“No you didn’t,” he assures, getting up when she wipes away some tears before they can fall. She nods slightly when he makes a gesture like ‘can I sit here?’ to the spot next to her on her bed and he settles there, wanting to touch her, comfort her, but afraid to-not knowing where she’s injured.

“I knew,” she says quietly, her voice trembling despite the obvious attempts to keep herself from crying. “I knew he’d find out-I knew he’d…” she sniffs and Tony cautiously rests one hand on her flannel-clad thigh. “He’d _blow_ -I knew he would-it didn’t matter that he and Maya were also-they were sleeping together-” she hiccups slightly because she’s trying to cry, talk, and breathe at the same time “-I found out they-he said-you were-” she’s nearly hyperventilating and Tony can’t handle the whole not-touching thing they’re doing right now.

He guides her gently-giving her plenty of leeway to resist if she wants-onto his lap, their legs perpendicular as he cautiously holds her waist and she hides her face in his neck, hand clutching desperately at his shirt “-he _knew_ -I know he did-he saw the hickey-but I couldn’t _stop_ -I knew I-I kept coming back to you and he _knew_ -” Tony presses his cheek to the top of her head as she grips his shirt tightly, trying to get a handle on her emotions. 

“I couldn’t _stop_ , Tony.”

She's crying now, he can feel her tears and wet eyelids on his skin, and he tugs her closer, kissing her temple as she continues rambling about economics and studying and the lab and Killian and something about a car radio and his throat feels tight, as if he’s going to cry also, and when the hot prick of tears burn his eyes, he shuts them, softly dropping his chin to her shoulder, forehead pressed to her neck, lips absentmindedly kissing the bruised skin there without any sexual agenda, just purely for comfort.

Pepper's inconsolable and frankly, he doesn’t care-she deserves to cry her fucking heart out right now.

She’s not a loud crier, she hardly makes a sound besides tear-filled gasps of air and little whimpers, and Tony can’t do anything but hold her closer, never, ever wanting to let go. He slides one hand under the hem of her shirt and rests it on the small of her back gently, careful in case she has a bruise there, and one of her hands blindly searches for his other, sliding down his arm until she intertwines their fingers, her grip tight and desperate. 

He opens his eyes to look at their hands and hers is so small that he can’t stop staring at the way her long pale fingers squeeze him, pressing into the tan skin just below his knuckles. He’s never paid attention to her hands before-when a girl looks like Pepper does, the _last_ thing he cares about is their hands-but with her tiny one wrapped up in his, he can’t look away. Her nails are perfectly manicured and her palms are cold and he wonders if she tried to get Killian away with them when he was attacking her-if those little hands had shoved his chest or slapped his arms or pried herself out of his grasp. Or if she’d held them up in surrender, out to protect herself, up in a submissive, begging plea to make him stop.

Tony’s crying before he even realizes he is-he’d been so caught up in her that he didn’t even notice that a few tears had managed to escape. He blinks rapidly, trying to get himself to stop, because it’s her moment; he hadn’t been beaten within an inch of his life and he hadn’t been emotionally abused for God knows how long and he hadn’t been stuck in a toxic relationship for well over two years but the recap-the thought of her, so _fucking young_ -going through all of it alone only makes more tears roll down his cheeks because life’s not _fair_. 

Pepper’s an angel and angels don’t deserve to get put through Hell. 

 _Aldrich is permanent_. _I can’t break up with him._

He’s a fucking idiot-she’d given him plenty of signs that she was trapped in a tough situation. She was reluctant to leave a man she didn’t love, that should’ve been the first. He’d seen the bruise on her cheek, that was just one of many lies that he had believed. He’d seen how possessive Aldrich was, that was a warning-

“Tony.” Pepper’s voice is calm and the hand that had been holding his shirt runs up the back of his neck, playing with his hair nervously. “I _am_ sorry, I should’ve told you.”

He doesn’t want to pull away, doesn’t want to see her tear-stained, bruised face, doesn’t want her to see that he’s also been crying, but her head pulls back and her hand touches his jaw, making him look up. 

Her eyes are red and puffy, her nose pink, face shining with tears and she runs her thumb high on his cheek, wiping away the wetness there, not saying anything when she realizes he’d been crying right along with her and for that, at least, he’s grateful. 

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Pepper,” he says after a minute, trying to regain some composure because goddammit, she made him lose control. 

“I didn’t tell you.”

“It’s okay,” he soothes, although everything is not okay-she’s not okay- _he’s_ not okay-but maybe it will _eventually_ be okay.

He brushes the wisps of hair that had fallen out of her ponytail behind her ear, letting his hand rest on her face, and he suddenly realizes that they’re holding each other very closely-they seemed to do that a lot. He wouldn’t even realize that they were so consumed in the other until some external stimuli would force its way into their bubble and they’d have to take in their compromising position.

“I meant it, you know,” he clears his throat because his voice is too rough, too emotional. “What I said when…” He leaves the statement unfinished but he knows she knows what he’s talking about because she nods slightly, a bashful blush creeping across her cheeks. 

“I know.”

Pepper’s eyes meet his and he’s a goner; either it’s the girl in his arms for the rest of his life or no one else ever. 

Then-it sounds like a horribly cliché moment at the pinnacle of a romance movie but-he’s not sure who moves first, whose head begins to tilt before the other follows, whose eyes flit down to the others lips in suggestion, but one of them does and suddenly, he’s kissing her, mentally battling between pulling her as close as physically possible and being mindful of her injuries and she doesn’t pull away when his tongue glides over her bottom lip, reciprocating, pulling him into her, fingers tugging at his hair. He’s wary of kissing her too roughly because of her split lip but she seems like she could care less-her mouth is vigorous against his, hot and passionate, unrelenting, and he relaxes into it, letting her hair out of its ponytail. His hand moves from her face to the back of her head, feeling through her strawberry blonde tresses, wondering what would be so wrong about locking themselves up somewhere secluded and just living like this for the rest of their lives. 

He’d never been so infatuated with someone before and it’s simultaneously terrifying and thrilling.

“Pepper,” Tony begins the moment she pulls away, his voice barely a whisper and hand still holding her head as hers rests on his cheek. “I-you don’t-we…” _Marvelous start, Tony_. “I don’t want you to-to...I can wait,” he finally says, hoping she gets the gist of what he’s trying to say. “The minute you’re ready-I’ll-I’ll do whatever you need to breakup with him, you’re not-he’s _never_ going to-we’re gonna get through this.”

He used to be good at this whole smooth-talking thing, but the second emotions played with his mind, words got twisted and jumbled up in his head.

“I know,” she repeats, her eyes flitting over his face and he can’t stop looking at the bruises on her face, wondering how Killian was even capable of hurting her. “Tony, I…” she pauses, licking her lips subconsciously. “What you said-it’s-it’s mutual-but I can’t...I need time.”

He has to literally bite his tongue to keep himself from saying something as cheesy and vomit-inducing as “I’ll wait for you until the end” because honestly, he could feel his mouth nearly forming the words.

The very thought of her feeling the same way he does is enough to make him feel high-a little giddy and confused and suddenly, everything with color is over-saturated-but the sight of her hesitant, bruised, hurt face instantly sobers him as soon as he starts soaring. 

“I’ve got time,” he finally manages, deciding it's not too horribly romantic but serious enough that she’ll know he’s not playing around.

He’ll help her leave Killian, help her restart, help her move on, help her do whatever the fuck she doesn’t feel strong enough to do on her own.

Pepper’s eyes are caring as she looks at him, their faces still close because her hand is still on his cheek and his hand is still holding the back of her head, she’s on his lap and his other hand is under her shirt, resting on her back, and he watches her when she moves her palm up his face, high enough that her thumb traces his eyebrow. He leans into her touch, tilts his head forward, and closes his eyes when she kisses his forehead, almost on his hairline, her lips warm against his skin. 

“You’re a good man, Tony,” she murmurs into his hair, arms circling his head as she rests her chin on him and he rests one hand on her hip and another on her thigh. 

He doesn’t respond because he suddenly feels like he’s going to cry again when her fingers begin playing with his hair, nails tracing circles on his scalp, and he’s not sure who’s comforting whom and she’s the perfect fit in his embrace and he doesn’t want to let go and he doesn’t-they don’t-for a long, long time. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this has taken so long, I have literally no excuse but sheer laziness. This is one of those kinda filler chapters that help the plot but don't do much for the main characters so I put off writing it for a considerable amount of time. Don't worry, though, because I have the next two chapters half written and a very clear idea for the third. Again, sorry but I'm a lazy sack of shit lol

“So I was thinking...Happy ‘n’ Rhodey will go with you,” Tony says, lounging back on Natalie’s bed. 

“What?” Pepper asks, looking at him as she sits at her vanity, covering the bruises that’re nearly fully healed as Tony tries to learn enough economics to pass the test they have in Grogan’s in less than an hour. They’d been studying in her dorm recently because she’d emailed her professors claiming she was “out of town” while she was recovering and that excuse wouldn’t hold if people saw her around campus. Today’s her first day back because all her injuries could finally be hidden with makeup and concealing clothes. “Go _where_ with me?”

“You said you left stuff in Killian’s dorm,” he explains, fingers laced behind his head as he looks up at the ceiling. “Happy-have you met him?-he’s a friend of mine-and Rhodey are going with you. I sorted it out.”

Pepper drops the sponge that she’s been applying foundation with and stares at him.

She’s never met anyone named _Happy_ , she doesn’t want to be within five hundred feet of Aldrich at any point in the foreseeable future, and she barely remembers telling Tony that she’d left a few things in his dorm-it’d been said in passing and she didn’t even think he’d been listening to her. And she didn’t like the idea of Tony and Aldrich meeting to discuss this-them ‘sorting’ _anything_ out together was not something she wanted to imagine-Tony had hated him long before he ever found out about their dirty little secret and now, he practically turned into the Hulk whenever Aldrich was brought up.

It’d been a week and a few days since he came to her dorm and he’d been less than gentlemanly when referring to his plans of what he’d do to her boyfriend-he might as well be considered ‘ex’ at this point, because they hadn’t talked in nearly three weeks and she had no desire to rekindle anything-if he ever got the chance.

“What did you do to him?” She asks warily and he looks at her evenly, not giving anything away and she wants to see his hands, see if there’s broken skin on his knuckles, see if he’d punched Aldrich, wondering if he had resorted to violence to sort out the inexplicable anger he felt towards the situation. Honestly, she wouldn’t put it past him at this point. 

“We talked.”

“You _talked_?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs noncommittally, as if this revelation is meaningless, as if he possesses the impulse control to turn a conversation with Aldrich into anything but a disaster. “We talked over lunch. You know he _chooses_ to eat tuna fish? That’s-”

“What did you do to him?” She repeats, crossing her legs and giving him the best glare she can manage. 

“You honestly couldn’t expect me to not do anything.” His head is tilted slightly so he can look around his propped feet and the tender expression he’s wearing catches her off guard. “I was civil...considering.”

“I told you not to-”

“Yeah, well, I don’t care. No one does _that_ to their girlfriend and walks away unscathed.”

“Tony, _what did you do_?” She’s uneasy because, while Tony is not at all the violent type-he doesn’t ooze that aggressive masculinity that Aldrich did long before he ever proved it-there’s a certain gleam in his eyes right now that makes her question her previous characterization of him. And the downright viciousness in his tone a moment ago is enough to make her believe there might be a missing persons investigation underway for Aldrich right now. 

“We talked, Pep. I behaved,” he promises, but she doesn’t believe him. If there’s only one thing she knows about Tony Stark, it’s that he’s never once in his life _behaved_. 

“Then how did you get him to agree to-”

“Well, I mean, I wasn’t _perfect,_ ” he concedes, sitting up slightly and she purses her lips in response. “I didn’t really hurt him. I...remember I said he’s working on some sketchy stuff?” She nods slightly. “I had JARVIS look into him-he’s way past ‘sketchy’ and into ‘creating biochemical weapons that turn people into fire bombs.’ He’s-it’s fucked up,” he says bluntly and Pepper sighs in understanding; she knows Aldrich’s work is far from moral. He’d brought her to his lab on multiple occasions and his research seemed to be getting darker and darker as time went on, way past tiptoeing on the border of legality-he was downright drowning. But there was no one to endorse his work-no one _would_ -so he was relatively harmless. It’s the equivalent of someone plotting a murder in their basement but never going out and doing it. 

As dangerous as ideas are, they aren’t enough for arrests.

“And you threatened to…?”.

“I didn’t threaten. He’s lucky he knows people or he’d be facing an indictment on multiple charges of-”

“You _reported_ him?” Pepper asks incredulously, voice rising in disbelief. 

“No, I-” his eyes meet hers and his mouth snaps shut and she can see him thinking, trying to figure out how to word whatever he did in some way that doesn’t make her angry with him. “I simply...made his work catch the attention of some government officials.”

“I can’t _believe_ you-”

“I didn’t even-it wasn’t all of it, Pep, I have blackmail. It’s enough to keep him away from you.” He says it like it’s the only thing that matters in all the world and she doesn’t know quite how to interpret his tone or the way some flash of emotion courses through her at the thought. Or maybe she can interpret it just fine and his pure care overwhelms her. 

“He’ll retaliate,” she warns because she _knows_ Aldrich; he doesn’t take kindly to others attacking his character or pristine reputation-he’d stop at nothing to keep his image perfect.

“He can’t do shit to me,” Tony scoffs, straightening up slightly in his relaxed position as he continues, “So Hap and Rhodey are meeting us after Grogan’s today and you’re going then. I figured I wouldn’t go because I’m...me.”

“We’re going today?” She asks, blood rushing through ears, making her heart pound loudly-the sudden change from ‘never seeing Aldrich again’ to ‘seeing him _today_ ’ making her feel sick. She doesn’t want to see him ever. 

“Yeah, unless you wanna wait a bit. But spring break starts tomorrow and you’re going on vacation, aren’t you? And he’s leaving-”

“He’s _leaving_?” She asks, unable to hide the shock and pure...relief that floods her body. He’d threatened many, many things if she ever tried to break up with him and none of them ever included him _leaving_.

“Uh-huh, I pulled some strings. There’s a research facility funded by Berkeley willing to back up his work.”

“But it’s not…” she can’t help but be confused as she watches him sit there, exuding smugness. “Legal?”

“Sketchy research facilities back up sketchy scientists.”

“But, that’s-he could-his work has the potential to-”

“You underestimate me, Potts,” Tony laughs but it’s not that slightly snarky, joking, warm laugh that it typically is-it’s mirthful, menacing, and has dark undertones. “Give it a year and he’ll be arrested. My old man was close with the CIA and FBI and all _I_ have to do is whisper the word ‘terrorism’ in the directors’ ears and his ass is in Guantanamo Bay.”

“ _Guantanamo Bay_? You don’t have that much pull, Tony, his work isn’t killing innocent civilians or our troops.”

He grins a wry smile and fake simpers, “Oh, but I’m the orphan of the great Howard Stark, please help me keep terrorism out of America, _please_ , Mr. Director, it’s what my Daddy would’ve wanted-let me continue _his_ legacy.”

Pepper falters slightly with a response to that-she often forgets that neither of them have parents left even though they’re still nearly kids themselves-and he never mentions them, let alone makes semi-morbid _jokes_ about them, but she eventually manages to recover and get out, “Aldrich doesn’t deserve Guanta-”

“He deserves a fucking bullet in his head,” he seethes, that angry flare surging behind his eyes as he looks at her, all protectiveness and fury. “The only reason I’m not _immediately_ turning his ass in to the cops is because assault charges for first-time offenders have no hold in court; it’s a bunch of ‘he said/she said’ and they’d put _you_ through hell on the stand because of the typical ‘why didn’t you just leave’ bullshit and he has no priors. He’d get anger management and community service at best. He needs his world _ended_.”

“No he doesn’t, he-”

“Oh, yes he does.”

“It-he-”

“He almost _killed_ you, Pepper.”

“No he didn’t,” she scoffs, shaking her head, because Aldrich had been drunk and looking for a fight long before he caught her making out with Tony-he was releasing pent up frustration, he wasn’t actually angry enough to kill her. “You’re being dramatic. He wasn’t-”

“Well, unless you have  a _severe_ choking kink, he certainly fucking tried,” he says snippily, pain and bitterness lacing his words and she blinks in response, the sudden unpleasant memory of large, strong hands holding her trachea in a vice-like grip stuck in her mind. 

“You can’t falsely imprison him because of me,” she begins after a moment, trying to shake the feeling of being strangled-she can feel the unforgiving hold on her neck, see Aldrich’s hazy blue eyes, see his lip curled up in something like victory as she gasped and struggled in his grasp.

“ _Watch me_ ,” Tony challenges, now sitting up criss-cross on Natalie’s bed, leaning forward with anticipation at the thought of a dare. 

“I don’t think-”

“I don’t give a damn what you think about it right now, I’m in this for the long haul.”

His tone changes and she wonders what exactly he was referring to when he says ‘this’ because he sounds too passionate for it to just be Aldrich’s future-it sounds like he's referring to _their_ future.

The boundary between them was still a delicate, thin, precariously drawn line, a little smudged with her lipstick and blurred with his hands, but still there. That ever-present, steadily crumbling, metaphorical wall between them. She said she needed time and he’d respected her request-a few incidents aside, like two nights ago when he left her dorm fairly late and slowly, gently kissed her goodnight full on the mouth with Natalie as a witness. 

He was being good-he _is_ good. 

It wasn’t as if she doubted his intentions anymore-the man was hopelessly head over heels for her and she was the same-but she never thought she’d get the chance to be with him. A part of her thought she’d spend the rest of her life with Aldrich, because he’d genuinely convinced her she’d never be able to leave him.

If she’d known all it would take is one  easily angered person to see her bruises, she would’ve shown Tony the mark Aldrich left the first time he got jealous of him. 

Now that she’s free of him-literally _free_ if he’s leaving, a thought she still hasn’t fully processed-she’s not exactly sure _what_ to do. She never considered the option of being single because she never considered the fact that she’d actually be able to leave him. But she doesn’t even _want_ to be single; Tony is _right there_ and she’s holding back because...she just is. 

It doesn’t make a lot of sense, in fact, it makes no sense but there’s something weird to her about starting a new relationship so soon after leaving a horrible one. She has every right to be paranoid about boyfriends. She didn’t-

“Yeah, you think that through,” Tony says, nodding, getting off Natalie’s bed and standing. “I’ll be waiting.” 

He squeezes her shoulder as he passes by her to the door, dropping an oddly comforting kiss to the side of her head briefly, and she gets that he doesn’t just mean he’ll be waiting for her outside Grogan’s-he’s waiting for _her._

“Tony-” his hand is already on the handle and he doesn’t stop opening the door as he turns to face her, one hand brushing his long, slightly disheveled hair out of his face as he lifts an eyebrow in question “-you’re-thank you.”

His eyes twinkle when he grins at her and fear-simultaneously hot and cold-courses through her because she shouldn’t have _ever_ -under any circumstance in this life, a past one, or the next-fallen in love with Tony Stark but when gives her a cheeky wink and says, “Anything for you, Pep” as he shuts the door to step into the hall, goddamn herself, but she _believes him_.

\--

There’s a dark blue bruise on Aldrich’s jaw when she sees him later that day and it surprises her-if Tony’s the one who left that mark, he’s certainly a lot stronger than she ever gave him credit for.

“Virginia,” he says cooly, as if they hardly know each other, and she meets his eyes.

He’s angry and, even with the protective figures of Happy and James on either side of her, she can’t help the dread that takes her body by storm. Happy-she hasn’t been given his actual name-is tall and wide, built like a linebacker and James is fit and practiced martial arts. Aldrich has nothing but brute strength against two men that Tony-who’s protective worrisome as it was-had picked to serve as her bodyguards at this moment.

“We’ll be in and out,” James says, giving absolutely Aldrich absolutely no room to object.

Pepper feels like she’s part of a police escort as she walks into Aldrich’s single dorm room because Happy walks in front of her and Rhodey walks behind until they’re in the room and they stand to the left and right of her again.

“I said she could be in here,” Aldrich begins, his tone biting and harsh. “I told Stark _she_ -”

“And now we’re here, bud,” Happy cuts him off, clapping his hands together and looking at her, his presence comforting, like how she imagines having a loving, slightly overbearing older brother would feel. “Now, what’s yours?”

“Just-the-I’ll get it,” she answers, shifting the empty box in her arms as she walks between the two-man fence in front of her and approaches Aldrich’s dresser. She opens the middle drawer and begins pulling out her clothes-mostly just stuff to sleep in-and is glad to see Aldrich hasn’t touched it. It’s all perfectly folded, untouched in the past month, and she wonders if he’s even been in the room much because it looks fairly unlived in. 

Furrowing her eyebrows slightly, she wonders if Tony had talked to Aldrich more than once.

It would explain why their separation had gone so smoothly; in the past, even after particularly bad knock-down, drag-out fights, Aldrich would be showing up within the week to soothe and threaten her but he’d ignored her this time.

It’s no coincidence this time involved Tony.

Reminding herself to ask Tony about it later, she continues to look through the dresser, sorting out Aldrich’s shirts from hers, pausing when she sees her underwear.

Each and every pair, he’d bought her-most of them were lacy and skimpy, ones that he liked her to wear and she swallows hard, debating whether or not she should take them. If she should wear gifts from the man who’d abused her for so long-it wasn’t as if she didn’t have her own underwear in her dorm. Maybe she should take them with her and burn them. But what Tony would think of her-

She slams the dresser drawer shut.

“Careful,” Aldrich warns, his arms crossed as he sits on his-what was once upon a time _their_ -bed. It’s made up, but the blankets are slightly skewed, how they always were whenever Aldrich made the bed-for whatever reason, he could never get the top cover straight. 

Pepper almost feels like crying when the memory of the time, about three months into dating, when he’d been sitting on his bed, a relaxed, easy smile on his handsome face as he said “I love you, you know” for the first time and she’d never heard someone say it so earnestly, mean it so much, and he’d swept her right off her feet before he turned into a monster. 

They were supposed to be perfect.

He was supposed to be it.

“Anything else?” Happy asks worriedly, tossing a menacing glare over his shoulder at Aldrich’s comment.

“Yeah, um-” she doesn’t want to talk to Aldrich, she doesn’t want him to say something to her, to twist her already twisted emotions “-I just have to find…” She leaves the statement unfinished as she scans the top of the dresser, eyes landing on the bracelet, and she lets out a sigh of relief. “Got it.”

She carefully lays the bracelet in the box, on top of a Spirit Week t-shirt from her high school, and she glances around the room, trying to remember if she’d left anything else here.

Normally, if she was staying the night, she’d bring the next day’s clothes with her so she really only had a few things like the bare minimum of makeup-which she didn’t need to take-and sleep clothes. Her clothes, her sentimental belongings, her shoes, her school stuff, was all in her dorm.

“I want a few words with her,” Aldrich says and her heart pounds as she looks at James and Happy, unsure how much Tony had told them. If they thought it’d be okay to leave her for a moment by herself with Aldrich, if-

“No.” They answer at the same time, sounding like they’d rather kill him than give in to any request he has.

“Virginia,” he begins disapprovingly, his head tilting down at her in question. “You’re not even going to say goodbye?”

_Go to hell._

“Goodbye,” she says through a tense smile, not wanting to spend another second in the room-it suddenly feels too small and she’s uncomfortable and jittery, sort of the way one gets when they have to use the bathroom but they’re somewhere that doesn’t have a bathroom. 

“Yeah, bye,” Happy says, his hand resting between her shoulder blades reassuringly, as if to say ‘he is not coming within three feet of you’ and she appreciates the gesture more than he knows. 

“I’m going to California,” Aldrich begins, tilting his head slightly as he stares down at her. “Stark’s company is out of there. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

 _Give it a year and he’ll be arrested_. 

“That’d…” she pauses, searching for the right words. “Be nice.”

He makes a little sound of agreeance and his eyes don’t leave hers as James takes the box from her, heading towards the door and she realizes this is _it_ -he’s done, Aldrich is out of her life for good and Tony’s the one responsible for it and that alone makes something swell in her chest for him, watching his lips quirk up in a smile in her mind, and the fear from earlier melts away.

She’s not going to be one of those people who allows one bad relationship to ruin the rest; Tony had made it abundantly obvious he’s nothing like Aldrich and there wasn’t a single warning bell going off in her head whenever they hung out.

“Good luck in California,” she says politely, offering him a fake smile as his eyes narrow.

“You’re getting brave, Ginny,” he begins,  accusatory and aggressive. “I thought I’d-”

“I think we’re done,” Happy says, already holding the door open for her, and Pepper exits quickly, hearing something crude leave Aldrich’s mouth before James snaps at him lowly and the only thing she hears is Tony’s name and she remembers him saying “I have blackmail. It’s enough to keep him away from you” and with that and her two man escort, she feels safe for the first time in a long time.

Pepper happens to _love_ safety. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is long as shit and I sincerely apologize, but there's a lot to get through. Have a lovely day and thanks for reading :)

Tony taps his pencil on the pages of his opened physics book, his mind too busy to actually get anything done-he’d been staring at the assignment so long, his vision’s getting blurred.

He’d just gotten back from showering, after a nearly two hour run, after cleaning his room, after doing all his homework because he was bored out of his fucking _mind_.

He didn’t have anywhere to go for spring break-Rhodey and Happy were visiting family and he’d already intruded on their New Years and Christmas, respectively, and he didn’t want to be that much of a nuisance. And Pepper was out of the question; his promise to give her time would not agree with his plans to fly them to some remote location for ten days so they could figure _them_ out. He didn’t want to go partying, either, because then he’d have to explain himself when he doesn’t immediately have sex with every girl in sight; last year’s spring break, he’d done four girls at once-one for his mouth, Little Tony and each of his hands-and _everyone_ on the yacht knew it so partying would do nothing but confuse people and start rumors. 

So he stayed at MIT for the week, wandering around the fairly deserted campus, enjoying the free time he got in the lab with no interruptions-he’d worked out all the little problems with JARVIS and, while the AI would always need modifications and updates, he considered his little creation done.

JARVIS was up and running, fully operational, and he only had himself to celebrate with. 

But of course, now that JARVIS was perfected, he had absolutely nothing to do.

Essays? Check.

Exercising? Check.

Homework? Check.

Doing his laundry? Check.

Other assignments? Check.

Organizing his room? Check.

Catching up on-or at the very least, getting enough-sleep? Check.

Cleaning himself so thoroughly that every pore in his skin could breathe? Check.

Being able to shoot a paper ball into the trash can on the other side of the room, using every flat surface around as a backboard? Check.

Wondering every single goddamn second what Pepper was doing, whether she was having fun in Myrtle Beach with Natalie and the dorks from SHIELD-that stupid fucking organization he should’ve joined when Will-or Phil or Bill, he still wasn’t sure-Coulson asked him to? Check. 

Students Helping International Entities Learn and Develop was _not_ an organization that he originally wanted to be a part of. For starters the Dean, Nick Fury, was the overseer and he had spent enough time being reprimanded by the eye-patch wearing man that any extra minute spent with him was too much. And SHIELD tended to attract the well-meaning, but often naïve, misfits like Clint Barton and Steve Rogers. Not only did he want to be as far away as physically possible from the starry-eyed, hopeful, stupidly innocent Rogers, but he knew exactly how he’d be received in SHIELD-in that, he wouldn’t. Natalie was someone important within it-some President or something, Tony wasn’t sure, but she knew Fury well, though-and she reviewed all the people who wanted to be part of the club. He’d never make the cut.

Even with all the money in the world to buy his way in, he simply didn’t belong in SHIELD-it was for the people with morals, a shred of dignity, not men like himself who made money off of war.

He’s fairly certain owning a weapon’s company is the exact opposite of everything SHIELD stands for, in fact.

The kids at MIT were part of a larger, transcontinental group that negotiated agreements between countries, helped nations in need, and delivered aid whenever asked, but it was all student-run. Sort of like UNICEF and the National Beta Club’s love child.

He didn’t know Pepper was a part of SHIELD-he couldn’t particularly see how that went along with her Business Administration degree-but apparently, she and the Coulson kid had helped restart and revitalize the crumbling mess of an organization that was once MIT’s chapter-he’d had JARVIS look into it.

She and Coulson had brought student interest back into the club their first year and despite the fact that she had done the majority of the grunt work to rebuild SHIELD, she hadn’t even run for any office within it. She just fixed it up and wanted nothing from her actions-even Coulson had become the Chief of Something Important-but Pepper’s rarely even mentioned in campus articles where SHIELD is concerned. 

He’d also learned that last summer, while he was around cruising from party to party, fucking anything with a decent rack that moved,  _she_ had been in South America as part of a group of people who were administering vaccines to the impoverished families. They’d started in Mexico, going through every country down to Chile, in the span of three months. He’d seen the schedule; it was a lot of traveling, it was a lot of work, they’d set up camps in hundreds of towns, and could only be there for a few hours before they left for the next village.

There’s a picture of Pepper, holding a small, possibly _week_ old, baby as she sat around a fire pit somewhere in El Salvador that he’s fairly certain he wants framed.

She’d been makeup free, slightly sunburnt, sporting an absolutely _ungodly_ amount of freckles, and the picture wasn’t the best quality-it’d probably been taken by some dumbfuck like Rogers-but she had been smiling, most likely cooing, at the infant in her arms, her head tilted downwards, pure tenderness and goodness on her face and it’d only reconfirmed everything he already knew about her; Pepper Potts is without a doubt the greatest person he’s ever met, and the greatest thing that's ever happened to him.

But she’d asked for time. 

He had time. 

With a heavy sigh, he shuts his notebook, astrophysics being absolutely impossible with so much and so little on his mind, deciding to just go to bed. He doesn’t care if it takes an entire bottle of NyQuil to knock him out-he’s going to catch up on some fucking sleep if it kills him. 

Looking around, he tosses the textbook onto the floor rather unceremoniously because he doesn’t have anywhere else to put it, and he rubs his eyes tiredly, suppressing a yawn as he drinks half a bottle of water in a few gulps, wiping away what didn’t make it into his mouth with the back of his hand. He leaves the bottle open on his desk and considers-

There’s a knock at the door. 

His head tilts towards it in surprise and he glances at Rhodey’s bed, fairly certain he’d said that he wasn’t coming back until either tomorrow or the day after, and he starts slightly when he wonders-just for a second-if it’s Killian. 

There were quite a few things Killian had against him. 

Cautiously, quietly, he picks up his heaviest textbook and the knocker knocks again, more frantically, and it doesn’t particularly sound like an angry, threatening knock so he disregards the thought of Killian as he opens the door, a slender frame and-

“ _Pepper_?” He asks, unable to hide the nearly rude shock in his voice, as she stands there in his dorm doorway, in _jeans_ -she’s never worn jeans before, he doesn’t think-he didn’t know she owned jeans-and she’s in a pair of Vans-he didn’t know she owned anything but heels. She’s not herself, she’s a relaxed, casual version of Pepper Potts that he’s not sure he’s ever seen before. “What’re you-”

“I was thinking,” she begins, chewing her bottom lip for a moment, glancing around. “I-can I come in?”

Before he even fully registers the question, he’s opening the door for her, stepping out of the way, giving her space to come inside, discreetly dropping the textbook on the floor so that she can't know how much of an actual moron he is.

She looks good-a little tanner and more freckled than he last remembers-and her hair is down, framing her face. 

“So, you were thinking?” He begins, prepared to blow her away with all the knowledge he’s acquired from his world economics textbook that was opened for the first time all year today, suddenly not tired. “I was, too. I looked over the stuff for Grogan and I definitely want to debate about inflation in-”

“You _what_?” She asks and he can tell it’s the last thing she expected to hear from him.

“Yeah,” he can’t help the grin that barely graces his lips at her incredulous face. “I was bored, Pep, don’t act so surprised. I’m the economics _God_ right now. Ask me about anything-inflation, GDP, oil, NATO, s-”

“I think I’m in love with you, too, Tony,” she blurts out, like she’s been bursting to say it since she saw him and he stops, furrowing his eyebrows, squinting at her a little. “I-Tony, I-”

“You mean to say it was as simple as learning _economics_?” He asks humorously, giving her the chance to back out-to have this be written off as a joke, unsure how serious exactly she is because there’s just no  _fucking_ way she’s saying what he thinks she’s saying.

“No-I-I was thinking earlier, during break, and I-” he doesn’t get to hear the rest of her thought because he decides an opened-mouth kiss would be the best way to communicate.

She freezes for a brief moment and he takes advantage of it as he pushes her against the closed door, pressing her firmly into the wood. When she begins to reciprocate the kiss, her hands coming up to cup his face as her fingers play with his hair, tugging him closer, he lifts her up, lacing his fingers together under her ass. Her legs wrap around his waist without a second's hesitation and her soft weight in his hands, her arms around him, her warm mouth on his, is enough to make him press into her a little harder. 

“I missed you, you know,” he breathes into her neck, feeling her smile against him as he kisses her skin and he wants to cry-which would be incredibly unmanly and quite the damper on the good mood-but he doesn’t care because she’s fucking perfect and she’s _his._

They can leave stuff unsaid-they can be vague and beat around the bush-because he gets it-they get it-they don’t have to say _it_ for them to understand each other. 

Pepper’s hand rests on the back of his head and gently pulls at his hair, making him look at her and his breath gets caught in his throat when she smiles sweetly, not a wide one like the one she gives when she’s happy-this one is quiet, soft, intimate and he thinks his heart actually stops beating when she says softly, “I missed you, too.”

He kisses her again and moves them off the wall, walking backwards until he hits his bed, wobbles slightly, and falls onto it with Pepper on top of him. Their teeth and noses clash painfully upon impact but neither acknowledge that little hiccup as she straddles him, a fire burning between their bodies that needs to be extinguished _now_ or they’re going to do things that can’t be undone within the hour. 

Her hands travel under his tank, exploring, and he rests his right hand low under the waistband of her pants, practically halfway down her jeans, to grip her ass. 

She _likes_ that and he can’t help but squeeze her skin in his hands, not wanting to treat her like a piece of meat, but he’s still a man who happens to have the most gorgeous woman he’s ever met on top of him. 

Her little moan makes him press into her ass, pushing their centers together, and he thrusts up as she grinds down, the friction between their bodies downright sinful. 

He’s fucking _done_ for. 

“You have to stop-” he hums in pleasure when her hips rock against him “-now, Pep if- _ah_ -” she works him out of his tank “-you don’t wanna go any further.”

Her smile is content, and a little devious, as she bites her bottom lip and grinds on his half-hard cock with a considerable amount of force. 

“Play time’s up,” he growls, grabbing hold of her waist and flipping them so he’s on top of her. 

Her body is warm and welcoming, making room for him, and she’s so alive beneath him, so passionate, that he almost forgets that they have urgent, pressing plans that involve things other than him just laying there, looking at and feeling her. 

He gets her pink t-shirt off in no time, her tan stomach and bra now exposed and he starts, unable to hide his shock, when he sees a plethora of green, almost fully healed bruises across her ribcage, evidence of the hell she’d been through two-or maybe three?-weeks ago. 

He thought she’d fully recovered. 

He shouldn’t have shoved her into the door, or thrown them on the bed, or flipped her so roughly, or-

“Tony?” Her voice is gentle, as if she knows that something’s wrong, and he meets her eyes, unable to shake the memory of her vibrant bruises from his mind. Those lips, that’re swollen and enticing now, had been split and quivering as she cried, an-

“ _Tony_ -”

“I’m fine,” he says, eyes drawn back to the markings on her ribcage. It’d been a _month_ how the fucking _hell_ did she still have bruises? What kind of force did it take to bruise someone so severely that they still showed weeks later? How much pain had she been in? Why-

“Don’t look at it,” she says when she notices what he’s staring at and one of her hands finds his face, trying to kiss him, but he sees that the other moves to cover the exposed skin of her torso. 

 _No, fuck, no, that’s not_ -

“Move your arm,” he orders lowly, meeting her eyes, not even for a second enjoying the way she looks surprised. Her hand remains on her skin, trying to hide the bruises, and he’s not sure if his stomach twists in anger or sadness but he doesn’t like any of it-less than ten minutes in and she’s already thinking he is judging her for the marks someone _else_ left on her. “Pepper, _move_ -” he kisses her for a second, keeping it short and controlled “-your fucking hand.”

She seems reluctant to do so and he’s not gonna get on his knees and beg, so instead, he shifts, allowing his mouth to explore the skin she doesn’t want him to see. 

Meeting her eyes, he tugs at the wrist that’s blocking his vision and he kisses the palm of that hand tenderly, emotions he’s never felt before swirling around in his chest when it looks like she’s going to cry-she bites her bottom lip and her eyelashes flutter as she glances at the ceiling. He intertwines their fingers and rests their linked hands by her side, beginning to kiss his way down her chest, noticing with an oddly affectionate grin that she has touches of sunburn under her bra, little spots here and there that weren’t perfectly covered by sunscreen throughout her time at the beach. 

“Does it hurt?” He asks suddenly, looking up at her. 

“What?” Her voice is soft and she definitely looks like she’s on the verge of tears. 

“The-your-” he glances towards her ribs. “All the-”

“Oh, no,” she assures, squeezing his hand. “It only looks bad, it’s not-”

“It doesn’t look _bad_ ,” he immediately cuts her off, not liking that she sees this as some sort of flaw-she’s fucking perfect and a few bruises that Killian had left on her certainly didn’t change that. 

She wrinkles her nose in disdain and says, “They’re ugly, Tony, you don’t have to-”

“They’re not ugly,” he argues, and if it wasn’t such a serious topic, he’d be laughing because of fucking _course_ they’d wind up arguing in bed. 

“Yes, they are, they’re disgusting to-”

She makes a sudden high-pitched, keening sound because he’s had enough of her self-deprecating rambling and he’d taken her right nipple in his mouth and sucked- _hard_ -to get her to shut up. 

Her bra is still on but he’s pulled it down enough that he has full access to both her smooth, supple breasts and nips at one, knowing the combination of pain and pleasure will make her moan and he grins in victory because he’s right-of course he is. He moves his hand that isn’t holding hers up to knead and play with her soft breast, pinching and pulling at her nipple as she gasps beneath him. 

“I swear to God, Pep, you’re _perfect_ ,” he murmurs into her skin as he kisses his way down her chest, his mouth roaming over bruises now. She makes a sound-or maybe she says something, he can’t hear much with the blood rushing through his ears-and he scans her skin quickly, finding the worst of the bruises before leaving a dark red, vibrant hickey over it. Her back arches and she hums at the feeling and he adjusts his body so that his hand can rub her through her jeans. 

“Tony-” she sounds like she’s going to continue but she doesn’t-just leaving his breathily moaned name in the air and he runs his tongue over the skin near her navel, her stomach flat and smooth as her hips barely move in time with his hand to increase the friction between her legs. 

“Yes, dear?” He mocks as he unbuttons her jeans, meeting her eyes and noticing with a painful twist that she has a single tear streak down the side of her face before sees her little heart tattoo on her abdomen. 

He’s still not sure why, but he fucking _loves_ that tattoo.

It’s small and sentimental and cute and classy and it fits Pepper all too well; a little bit of a surprise but still just as lovely. 

She lifts her hips when he tugs her jeans down her legs, letting go of her hand that he’d forgotten he was holding, and he can’t help the smile that spreads across his face when he sees the light pink tint to her thighs. 

“Do they not have sunscreen in South Carolina?” He asks innocently, kissing along the inside of her leg, tongue trailing over the warm sunburn. “You know you can get-”

“Shut up,” she laughs, threading her fingers through his hair and he wonders if it’s even healthy to love the feeling of someone so much-it certainly is not a good idea to allow himself to get _this_ happy because of such a simple touch. 

Tony meets her eyes for the briefest moment, before looking back at her cotton underwear-simple pink stripes with a lace hem, which match the pink shirt she was wearing _and_ the pink bra he needs to get her out of soon-and the wet patch darkening the thin cloth makes pride and hunger course through him without any warning. Her hips jolt against him when he licks her through her panties, a surprised, strangled yelp escaping her as her fingers tug his hair. 

He grins like a madman when he tastes her-incredibly faint because of her underwear-because good fucking _Lord_ , she’s just about the best thing he’s ever put in his mouth. 

It’s indescribable, really, how much he loves everything about her. 

“Don’t,” she says suddenly when he inserts his pointer finger into her dripping center, continuing to lick her through her underwear because he’s sure the cloth barrier is extra stimulation. “Tony-I don’t want to-”

He sucks at her clit and she jerks under him, hips thrusting into his face as she lets out a little ecstatic cry that makes him painfully hard under his sweatpants. 

“Fine, have it your way,” he says, giving her a dirty look as his mouth and fingers leave her pussy, his head being pulled up to meet her lips in a searing kiss. 

Without any warning, one of her hands takes hold of his throbbing erection through his sweatpants and he shakily exhales when she begins to move her hand up and down his length.

“You’re evil,” he grits out as she wriggles under him, getting her jeans and underwear off with one hand and continuing to palm him with the other. “I think God _act_ -” he gasps when she squeezes him, just the right amount of pressure to make his world spin “-ually flooded the Earth to keep people like you from existing.”

“Is this your idea of pillow talk?” She asks with a mischievous grin as her hand slips under the waistband of his pants and her little fingers wrap around him, the subtle, barely concealed shock on her face when she realizes he’s not wearing underwear and is able to get a feel of just how big he is making a surge of pride shoot through him.

He’s good in bed-he knows it, she knows it, his professors, his classmates, _everyone_ knows it-but his size never seemed to be mentioned-because who cared about his long, thick cock when a girl once came after he’d had his mouth between her thighs for a _minute_. Maybe people underestimated him because he was short or something, but most had a reaction similar to Pepper’s when they reached down his pants the first time.

“Condom?” He asks after a second, wondering how embarrassing it’d be if he came right now-from a thirty second hand job-because he hasn’t had sex in quite some time and Pepper’s wrist was clearly sent from either God or the Devil to please and antagonize him. 

“On the pill,” she responds without missing a beat, pushing his sweatpants down his thighs before moving them the rest of the way down with her feet in a smooth motion that has most _definitely_ been practiced and he blinks, trying to get the image of her and someone else in bed together out of his head-she certainly hadn't perfected that move at vacation bible school. 

Tony lines up the head of his cock with her center and her hips cant up, trying to get him deeper, and he leans forward, bracing himself on his forearms, their faces impossibly close as he slowly enters her, filling her up entirely.

He knows what she feels like-he’d practically engrained the memory of her pussy in his brain from their time together in the lab, but memory and his imagination don’t even compare to what it actually feels like to have her tight, hot, soaking wet walls quivering around him.

He kisses her, their mouths wide open against the other’s as he gives her a moment to adjust to his size, tasting her slowly and frantically at the same time. This already feels too good and he’s not sure if it’s because she’s impossibly tight around him or because he hasn’t had sex in a while or if it’s always supposed to be like this when feelings are involved. 

Even the best sex he’s ever had doesn’t compare-that was an erotic build up and quick release-he’s feeling this in every nerve ending, from his head to his toes, and they’ve barely even started. 

He shifts his hips just slightly and she clenches tight around him, a little breathy gasp passing her lips, and it takes every bit of willpower he possesses to not slam into her and wildly fuck her until she can’t walk. He always had given every girl he was in bed with exactly what she wanted but right now, he wants to take it slow with Pepper. 

She deserves so much more than ten minutes of rough sex. 

“ _Move_ ,” she orders after a bit when she pulls back from their kiss, biting her swollen lower lip when he thrusts deep into her. 

Tony grins at her, wanting to make some smart ass remark about her being bossy, but decides against it when he begins a slow, steady pace and her hand searches desperately for something to grab on to, eventually tightly clutching the pillow her head’s resting on. 

Her long legs are wrapped around his hips, heels digging deliciously into his ass, and he watches her closely, committing the way her eyebrows furrow and her cheeks flush and lips part in pleasure to his memory forever. With one arm above her head, her breasts are exposed and he can see all of her bruised ribcage and he’s torn between telling her he loves her until he’s blue in the face and giving her the wildest, craziest night of sex she’s ever had-but he manages to keep the slow pace for a long time, building her up and up and up for a while, until her hips begin moving of their own accord and he doesn’t want it over so fast-it’s their first time and if they’re going into a relationship, it’s supposed to be special. 

But when Pepper’s nails rake up his back until they settle behind his shoulder blades, the simple movement makes him thrust roughly, because there’s a certain desperation to her hold that creates a downright animalistic drive in him to have her coming- _now_ -on his cock. She’s gripping him tight, possibly drawing blood, and her back is arched, head pressed back into the pillow in ecstasy as she bites her lip and he falters-he doesn’t want her not making sounds-he wants her to be _screaming_ his name. 

He kisses her sloppily in an attempt to distract her and it works-no sooner have his lips landed on hers that she’s gasping as he rams deep into her. 

“Harder, Tony,” she demands, the soft whine to her voice as she says his name nearly pushing him over the edge “-just like-yeah-right there-” she makes a sound between a hum and a moan and the realization that this is _Pepper_ is his bed, writhing and moaning and flushed because of _him_ , hits him like a freight train and he slams into her again. Her eyes roll back in her head and her mouth hangs open as she clings to him, unable to even make a sound as he pounds into her. 

“Look at me,” he suddenly begs, not sure he would be physically capable of stopping his thrusts at this point. It’s going to be over soon-too soon-she’s squeezing him tightly and her eyebrows are furrowed and he wants to see her eyes-he wants to look at her-wants to see her come undone. “Pepper, God, baby, _look at me_.”

Her eyelids struggle to open but eventually they do and when their eyes meet, they’re both gone; four final hard and fast thrusts and he’s coming, shuddering as her walls milk him, a strangled cry escaping her and a low groan passing his lips as the vibrant blue of her irises steal his soul-if he thought he was in love with her before, he’s a fucking idiot-this moment destroys the scale and resets everything.

“You’re beautiful,” he gasps when her eyes flutter-as if they want to shut and she’s using every bit of willpower she has to maintain eye contact-and he’s unable to stop himself from saying, “I mean it, Pep, I love you.”

Her back arches in one final show of pleasure, nails tearing at the skin of his back and her eyes shut, a loud cry-it might’ve been his name but it’s unintelligible when it reaches his ears-resonating around the room, her pussy clamping down on him almost painfully as she comes. 

He’s heard somewhere that the average orgasm lasts anywhere from ten to thirty seconds but he’s fairly certain that he is lost in her for an hour as they writhe and moan in the throes of passion, and he kisses her pulse point as she comes down from her high, back and neck still arched in rigid pleasure. 

They lay there for a long moment, sweaty bodies holding on to the others, breathing heavily, feeling each other’s hearts racing as he absentmindedly kisses her damp neck and her nails draw little patterns on his stinging back. He might’ve bruised her hips from the last few minutes of hard sex and he’s fairly certain her nails drew blood and he can’t help the grin that spreads across his face when he feels the random, sporadic aftershocks of her orgasm. Gradually, though, her body begins to relax and she stops spasming and his heart stops pounding so loud that he can hear it and the tiredness he’d been feeling before she showed up returns. 

“Are you gonna fall asleep?” He asks quietly as he feels her body tense in a yawn, although her limbs remain long and loose around him. 

“Probably,” she answers tiredly, her half-lidded, eyes meeting his. “Are you wanting-”

“No, I’m exhausted,” he assures immediately, kissing her lazily a few times, the warmth of their post-sex haze and contentment spreading through his body. “I was gonna go to sleep before you showed up.”

“I’ll be sure not to barge in next time,” she teases and he wonders if she’s even aware of the little needy, disappointed sound she makes when he pulls out of her. 

“Yes, please note that my official consulting hours are between eight and five every other Thursday,” he responds with light sarcasm as he tries to get situated next to her. 

The bed is way too small for them-they’re two full grown adults and it’s a twin bed-to lay in together without practically being on top of each other, but he doesn’t care about sharing so little space with Pepper. 

“Where’s my shirt?” She asks, sitting up slightly as she looks around dopily and he notices goosebumps jumping up across her arms. 

“On the floor,” Tony mumbles in response, shifting so that he can pull the sheets over them, his balled up, rumpled tank surfacing. “Here’s this.”

She looks at it blankly when he hangs it from his outstretched finger and it takes her a second to get it right-side out and on correctly, but soon his black top is hanging loosely over her thin body and he can’t resist leaning forward to kiss her, slow and firm, their tongues getting wrapped up as his fingers get lost in her long hair. 

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to fall asleep?” She asks breathlessly a long minute later, her hand not-so-innocently falling to rest on his thigh. 

He considers round two for a brief moment before deciding he has a reputation to uphold and he is actually exhausted-the last thing he wants Pepper thinking is that he can’t get it up more than once in one night. 

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to resist me, Potts?” He quips as she lays down-he can tell she’s tired, her movements are sluggish and he’s sure she’d been on an odd sleep schedule for traveling-her back pressed to his front, her long hair tickling his nose. 

“It’ll be tough,” she mock assures and he can hear the smile in her voice and he wonders when the fuck they ever got close enough that he could read her-he hadn’t realized that they’d become so in tuned between all their study sessions and it’s not fair that the first time he fell in love, it had happened so fast. 

It wasn’t as if a flip switched one day and he felt different about her, it was the terrifying realization that the deep affection, the adoration, the care, the worry, the everything he felt for her was what normal, emotionally perceptive people call ‘love.’ He hasn’t planned on ever-

“By the way,” Pepper adds conversationally, sleep weighing her voice considerably as her fingers lace with the hand he’s resting on her stomach. “I love you, too.”

Tony’s heart stops and restarts in double time as she settles into his embrace, soft curves and gentle angles, warm and compliant, her steady breathing an indicator that she’s falling asleep. He’d figured she did-he highly doubts she would’ve come here tonight if she hadn’t-but to hear her say it is possibly the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard. 

“Good,” he says after a minute and she’s pretty far gone now because she hums slightly but remains quiet after. 

He lets himself go, giving in to the tug of sleep, and their breathing becomes in sync, his nose buried in her hair, inhaling her scent, holding her body in his arms, never wanting to move from this spot. 

As the fuzziness of sleep takes him over, he grins stupidly and the last comprehensible thought he has before he’s lost in a dream is the boyish, almost innocent, unbelievably happy mantra of _She loves me_. 


	12. Chapter 12

Pepper wakes up slowly, the feeling of warmth, of being wrapped up in warmth, making her content, unwilling to move from the embrace she’s in. It’s fuzzy and cozy and she doesn’t want to budge-if she died like this, she’d be happy.

There’s a strong arm over her hip, a calloused palm under her shirt, resting high on her stomach, a leg between hers and soft lips kissing the nape of her neck. His fingers are drawing small patterns under her breasts, a certain tenderness to his touch that makes her inexplicably happy-he’s making shapes and letters and it’s so entirely innocent and pure that she almost wants to cry. His nails barely scratch along her ribcage, ghosting over her bruised skin, and she bites her lip at the memory of him kissing over her healing ribs-she doesn’t know what she ever did to find someone who adores her so entirely. 

She’d never thought Tony would be a cuddler but he’s holding her securely against him, keeping her pressed into his chest and she can feel him smile into her skin when she yawns, letting him know she’s awake. 

“Morning,” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep and a little deeper than usual. His stubble-covered cheek is scratchy against her skin but he’s being gentle as he nuzzles her neck and she can’t help the stupid smile that spreads across her face. 

“Morning,” she returns, turning in the cramped space-twin beds were definitely not made for two people-hitting her foot against the wall and adjusting further into his embrace. 

Tony’s sleepy brown eyes and disheveled bed head damn near makes her heart stop when he grins at her, all confidence and awe, before he cups her jaw and kisses her slowly, as if they have all the time in the world. His mouth and hands and body are warm and relaxed and she can’t help but wonder if he’s going to be like this every morning-after.

If this is what her foreseeable future looks and feels like. 

“Weird,” he says, almost in question, as he pulls back, searching her face for something with his eyebrow barely quirked. 

“No, it’s not weird,” she assures.

“It’s okay, right?” He asks, leaning closer. “Run that by me again-” 

She closes the space between their mouths and she can feel the slight curve of his lips, the-

“ _I_ think it’s weird.” The sound of James’s voice makes her let out a strange screech of surprise and Tony jolts-whether it be from the sudden knowledge of his roommate’s presence or her shrieking in his ear, she doesn’t know-turning around to look at James sitting there on his bed. “You guys look like two seals fighting over a grape.” 

“What’re you- _get out_ -” Tony orders exasperatedly, sitting up slightly, his chest bare and she realizes he’s wearing absolutely _nothing_ underneath the sheets. She’d at least put on the tank he was wearing last night-because she always thought ahead and James coming in was a possibility that had crossed her mind-so she’s not entirely naked, but Tony has the preparation skills of a rock. He wouldn’t have even thought about someone interrupting them. 

“It’s my room, too,” James says, getting up from the bed, a folder in his hands-probably the reason he stopped by in the first place. 

“I thought you were on break, what the fuck are you doing here?” Tony asks, now having the mind to pull up the blankets a bit to cover himself. He hadn’t been showing anything too inappropriate, but it’d been indecent.

“Have you two been canoodling all week?” He asks, ignoring Tony, meeting Pepper’s eyes, amusement evident in his own. 

“No,” she immediately responds as Tony says, “Yes.”

They look at each other for a moment and then glance at James, who’s standing in front of them like a mom who just found her kids painting the wall with nail polish. 

“What?” Tony asks, resting his hand on her leg under the sheets. “Babe, we do _not_ have to explain ourselves to him.”

“I want _something_ of an answer when I come in the room and see your bare ass hanging off the bed, Stark,” James says, his arms now crossed. “Are you guys dating now? Or is this, I don’t know, a friends with benefits arrangement? Or-”

“Well, I don’t know, honey, let’s be sure to invite him to our next Pepperony board meeting so he can be up to date,” Tony snips, and for the briefest second, Pepper is totally lost- _what does pizza have to do with any of this_?-and when she realizes it’s a combination of their names, she thinks she might actually be-dating? involved? partners? sleeping? _canoodling_ with the dorkiest man on the planet. “What the fuck are you _still_ doing here, man?” 

“Checking her out,” James answers immediately, giving Pepper a playful wink and she turns a bright pink, feeling the heat spread across her face and neck. She likes James-he’s a great guy whom she genuinely enjoys being around-but she never wanted him to see her with so little clothing on. 

“ _Leave_ ,” Tony growls, pointing at the door. 

“How long until it’s safe to come back?” He asks, heading towards the door, asking teasingly-mostly to Pepper, “Seven minutes?”

“Very funny-get out,” Tony says, shifting slightly so that he looks like he’s going to get out of bed, stark-no pun intended-naked and all. 

“Okay, okay, keep it under the sheets,” James says, shielding his eyes as his hand reaches for the doorknob. “Your ass was enough.”

“It’s a great ass!” Tony calls as James leaves, shutting the door loudly behind him before turning to her desperately. “We have _got_ to get him a girlfriend.”

“How long do you think he was in here?” Pepper asks, furrowing her eyebrows as she looks at Tony. He’d been awake before her-how the hell did he miss James being in the room? Had he been hiding? How much had he seen? Was-

“I don’t know. Long enough to get a peek at my great ass,” he grins as he settles back into the bed, pulling the blankets up to his chest, nudging her arm playfully with a closed fist. “It _is_ a great ass, isn’t it?” She opens her mouth to say something but she can’t find words and her inability to keep her face straight is enough of an answer-he’s got a great ass and he knows it. “Yours isn’t too bad either, Miss Potts. Mind if I take a look?”

His dirty wink makes her smack his chest playfully and he laughs, grabbing her hand as she pulls it away from him, kissing her knuckles softly, the sudden tenderness between them catching her off guard. 

“Do we need to talk?” He asks, furrowing his eyebrows, adding, “About…” he motions towards the bed “-this?”

“Probably,” she agrees, not elaborating or furthering the conversation.

There’s a lot of stuff that could be left unsaid and their feelings fall into that category. 

“So…” he drawls, turning on his side, propping himself up with one hand, their bodies touching. “We...like each other.” She quirks an eyebrow at him-they’d both admitted that there was more than just _liking_ involved. “And we slept together-which was very good, mind blowing,  _amazing_ , by the way, we should definitely do it more often-and that would make us…” He stares at her, his eyes managing to be soul-piercing and lightly humorous at the same time. “Together?”

“Well, yes, we are together in the sense that-”

“Oh, save it,” he says, his lips barely turning up in a smirk, as if he knows exactly what smartass thing she was going to say. “Are we a…” he hesitates and she takes a moment to touch him, reaching up by his ear to brush some crazy stray hairs out of his face with her fingers “-a...thing?”

She stills her hand and looks at him, teasing, “I think normal people call that _thing_ a relationship.”

“Are we?” He asks, his head tilted slightly and she stares at him, unable to move under the intensity of his gaze-the day she met him, and for quite a few months after, she didn’t think he was physically capable of feeling any emotions as strong as what he’s obviously feeling now. “In a relationship?”

“Well, I-” she stammers when the backs of his fingers brush her cheek, his dark eyelashes fluttering as his eyes roam over her face. “Do you want to be?”

“Do _you_ want to be?” He repeats, eyebrows furrowing slightly. “Because if you don’t-”

“No, no, Tony,” she assures, wondering why it feels so awkward. It’s so obvious- _they_ are so obvious-why is it so hard to put her feelings into words? “I’m good.”

“You’re _good_?” He asks dumbly. 

“I’m...good…” she pauses, wishing it didn’t sound so awful, wondering why she couldn’t have just said something normal. “For us.”

“Then...we’re a thing?” He clarifies, his smile radiant and shining through before his mouth ever moves. 

“I think so.”

“Good, it’s about damn time,” he says, mostly into her lips, but he pulls back, smiling wide suddenly. 

“What?”

“Do you really think we look like seals?” 

She shakes her head with a laugh, adding, “Can’t forget the grape part.”

“I don’t know why he said that-I don’t think seals even _eat_ grapes,” he muses thoughtfully, his fingers drawing figure eights on her hip. “That would never have occurred naturally-grapes don’t grow in the Arctic. He’s lost his mind. Or he went to a zoo during break.”

“I saw a camel,” she says without really thinking and he gives her an odd look, making her realize that was an incredibly random thing to blurt out. “At Myrtle Beach-you could ride them. There was a petting zoo by the mall.”

“Did you?”

“No, Steve did.” The memory of the tall hunk sitting awkwardly on the saddle, neither the camel nor the man appreciating the others presence, makes her smile. 

“Steve Rogers?” He asks curiously. 

“Yeah, do you know him?”

“Unfortunately.” 

Pepper narrows her eyes at Tony and asks disapprovingly, “ _What_ is wrong with Steve Rogers?”

“Well, for starters, you’re talking about him instead of having sex with me so I-”

“Who said I’d be having sex with you?” She asks, faking an incredulous tone as his fingers trail up the side of her torso, under her shirt. 

“You did,” he assures, kissing her pointedly. “Last night. Somewhere between ‘ _harder, Tony_ ’ and ‘ _I love you, Tony_ ,’ I’m pretty sure.”

Her breath catches in her throat and she can’t have a reaction to his very poor imitation of what she sounds like moaning-or at least hopes to _God_ she doesn’t sound anything like that-because him acknowledging the things they said last night was one of the last things she’d  imagined him doing. But, after a pregnant pause, she recovers and gives him a teasing grin, “ _I_ said that?”

“Yes,” he answers, rolling on top of her, something oddly comforting about his body being so close to hers. It feels good-not in a sexual way, in a purely comforting way-and their bodies fit together like an erotic puzzle. “You did.”

“Yeah?” She asks, leaning up to kiss him once. “I lied.”

“Bull shit,” he says, meeting her eyes and neither wants to look away-she’s fairly certain she’s never seen more beautiful eyes than his. It may seem unmanly to call anything about him beautiful but his eyes are nothing if not that; warm, chocolate brown orbs with different shades, sort of like a gorgeous piece of wood, that look at her with such intensity, she should be running the other direction.

She hadn’t thought she’d ever get over what Aldrich had done-certainly not so soon and certainly not with _Tony_ -but her brain can physically not help the onslaught of emotions that takes her over whenever he’s in her mind. 

“I do, you know,” she says quietly after a moment, her thumb smoothing over one of his disheveled eyebrows. “Love you.”

“I know,” he grins, something innocent about it that makes pain and hope and giddiness course through her. He’s never-she _knows_ he hasn’t-been in a relationship, probably has never told any woman but his mother that he loved them and meant it, and it’s a weight-not a burden, more of a sense of duty-heavy on her chest that she’s the first one he’s ever fallen in love with. 

“Would James tell anyone about us?” She asks, mind wandering, still questioning how the hell he managed to go unnoticed by Tony.

“Nah, he has no friends,” Tony answers flippantly, kissing her cheek. “Where’s Natalie?”

“Probably wondering where I am.”

“Didn’t you come back from the beach together?” 

“When I left I only told her I needed to talk to a friend.”

“Oooh, _scandalous_ ,” he says mischievously, his eyes twinkling, eyebrows furrowing suddenly. “She won’t be worried about you, will she?”

“I think she figured I was going to you,” she says, playing with his hair, finding the way he tilts his head into her hand, not unlike a dog would when scratched behind the ears, heartwarming. She likes his hair-the thick head full of wavy curls was honestly one of the first thing she noticed about him-but she can’t explain the urge she has to touch him and run her hands through it all the time.

She’s never really been affectionate but, hey, she’s never really been in love, either. 

“Good, I don’t want her knocking down my door, she’s scary.”

“She is not,” Pepper laughs, thinking about the initially somewhat intimidating, but actually incredibly sweet, woman. She may have a prickly exterior but she’s actually one of the greatest people Pepper’s ever met. 

“Yes, she _is_ -and I’m pretty sure she hates me.”

“She does not hate you, Tony.”

Pepper decides it’d be good to not stroke his already incredibly overblown ego by telling him that Natalie had been telling her to date Tony for months at this point.

“I think you’re lying,” he says definitively and she begins to protest but he cuts her off, “Pep, I don’t wanna talk about Natalie. I have a better idea.”

He presses a hot, wet kiss above her right breast, his nose nudging down the tank she’s wearing as she asks, “You’re going to actually study for once?”

He gives her a dirty look that sends a wave of heat through her before agreeing, “Maybe a little-” his eyes rake over her suggestively “-biology, anatomy, you know, a quick review of sex ed.”

“That’s your worst pick up line yet.” She wrinkles her nose, tilting her head up for a short, sweet kiss. 

“It’s working, though, isn’t it?” He asks, running his tongue along her collarbone. 

“No,” she says flatly and he mutters “Liar” into her mouth. 

She hums in response to that, kissing him again, absolutely no urgency behind it, slow hands and warm bodies and comfort and familiarity wrapping her up in a big, cozy, lovely blanket as he settles between her legs more comfortably, bracing himself on his arms, resting them on either side of her head. She likes that-him hovering close to her-their bodies not quite touching but still close enough that she can feel the heat that radiates off him. He’s like a soft, warm cocoon that surrounds her with safety. 

That’s, ultimately, after a little bit of reflection, probably the thing that made her fall in love with him.

She’s had a chaotic, less-than-perfect life, full of bad relationships and bad people and the constant uncertainty she grew up in has made her a control freak-she took psychology, she knows her Type A tendencies and obsessive organization and need to be in control and always _have control_  is a direct result of living through a hectic disaster of a childhood during which the only stable thing was the guarantee of instability-but Tony makes her feel safe and that had shocked her more than anything.

She’s never really felt _safe_ before-comforted and at ease and calm, sure, but the warm easiness of just trusting someone so entirely, _knowing_ and being able to _believe_ Tony when he says he won’t let anything happen to her-it’s probably the greatest thing she’s ever experienced. 

“I love you,” he murmurs by her ear, relaxing into her and she almost laughs when he lets his whole weight settle on her and she realizes he’s completely naked- _hugging_ her. Of all the crude and vulgar suggestions he’d made about what he’d do to her if they were ever in bed together, wrapping her up in a hug had never been mentioned once, and his change is the best kind of surprise imaginable. “It’s not even fair, Pepper, this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

She smiles into his hair in understanding because she gets it; this-them-was the last thing either of them were looking for when they met. It really wasn’t supposed to happen.

“I know,” she says after a long pause, curling his hair around her fingers and she feels his eyes shut, leaning into her further, and she finds this momement more intimate than the downright _perfect_ sex they’d had earlier.

He’s a cuddler-she finds that incredibly endearing and sweet because she thought the absolute worst of him and his womanizing reputation for nearly half a year-and he doesn’t let go of her for a long moment but she doesn’t mind.  He’s heavy on her, but not so much so that he’s crushing her, and his hands are holding her near her ribs, forehead-

“Are you hungry?” He asks suddenly, looking up at her, whatever peacefulness that had been hanging in the air effectively shattered with his seductive smirk. 

“Not really,” she shrugs when he furrows his eyebrows slightly, as if to say ‘are you _sure_?’ “Why?”

“I have urgent, pressing, _hours_ worth of plans for you.”

“I see,” she responds with a grin that’s impossible to hide, nodding slightly, shifting to help him get the tank off of her. 

It’s a good thing she’d been honest about her hunger because Round 2-eventually followed by Rounds 3 and 4-wind up taking the rest of their day in a mess of sweat and moans. 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Pepper will be singing in this chapter and the song she's singing is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oFQ76ctfS0 (this is the best singer I've heard sing it and it's also the version I learned). It's an Irish song and idk, I just thought it was time to start introducing Pepper's backstory a bit. Anyway, enjoy, I'm a bit wary of this chapter because it's the 13th.

Tony twirls his pencil between his fingers as he reads over the economics paper he has laying in front of him, next to a large plate of mac and cheese on a small table, and wonders how the hell he ever thought he was going to be able to concentrate with his-it still sounds foreign to him to even think it-girlfriend sitting across from him. 

Pepper’s hair is up in a loose ponytail, gentle red curls framing her face, and she’s not wearing much makeup-a little bit of mascara and lipgloss and her eyebrows are done but she looks otherwise natural and carefree and happy. 

Her teeth are worrying her bottom lip as she taps her pencil on her notebook, humming quietly, reading over another article-they’re preparing their sources for their final assignment in Grogan’s. Her long eyelashes flutter as she scans the lines, reading, analyzing, her concentration on such a mundane, boring task mind blowing to him. 

Barely, her lips begin to move in hushed words and at first he thinks she’s reading out loud, but she gets a little louder and he can hear her singing a happy, upbeat tune. 

She’s practically whispering the lyrics of whatever song it is, she doesn’t even seem to realize she’s doing it, and Tony strains his ears to be able to hear her. 

“-on that chick there was a feather, a rare feather-” her voice barely carries up a sweet falsetto and he just stares at her in awe, wondering if there’s anything she’s _bad_ at; her singing sounds like an actual, literal angel “-a rattlin’ feather, feather on the chick and the chick in the egg-” her pencil is tapping a steady beat and she’s no longer just whispering, she’s softly singing “-and the egg in the nest and the nest on the twig and the twig on the branch and the branch on the tree and the tree in the hole and the hole in the bog down in the valley-o-”

She flips the page and he wonders if it’s even physically possible to read and sing at the same time, but she seems completely lost in her own world as she continues gently, “Ho-ro, the rattlin’ bog, the bog down in the valley-o, ho-ro the rattlin’ bog, the bog down in the valley-o.”

She continues tapping her pencil and her eyebrows furrow, as if she’s not sure what the next words are before a little light flares behind her eyes as the lyrics of the-hymn? folk song? Girl Scouts anthem? Tony sure as hell doesn’t know-song come to her mind and she continues, “And on that feather there was a flea, a rare flea, a rattlin’ flea, flea on the feather and the feather on the chick and-” her eyes meet his suddenly and she looks at him, confusion and exasperation apparent as she asks, “What?”

“You were singing,” he says after a moment, not wanting her to stop because she’s been caught, but knowing she will. 

“I was?” Her eyebrows knit together, as if she has absolutely no recollection of doing so.

“Yeah...something about birds and trees and branches and the valley,” he says, trying to recite the mess of words she’s been humming lowly. 

“Oh, sorry, I-”

“Don’t _apologize_ ,” he laughs gently, something endearing in the way she seems embarrassed. “What song is it?”

“I-the-it’s an Irish song my grandma used to sing,” she answers eventually, distracted by an important-indicated by the three circles she makes around it-paragraph. 

“You’re Irish?” He asks, his eyes flitting up to her red hair and freckles. 

“My mom’s side was.”

He doesn’t miss the past tense or the finality to her tone, so he doesn’t push it. He doesn’t know much about her life before MIT-the most he knows is she has an uncle-and she never gives any sign of letting him know about her home life. 

They don’t talk family because, as far as he knows, they don’t _have_ family.

“You should sing more often,” he says conversationally, trying to get her away from reading. 

She’d said this wasn’t a date-even though she’d dressed up, wearing a blue sundress with flowers that has thin straps rather than sleeves, tastefully showing off her freckled shoulders and chest. He’d also treated-and believed-it was a date; he’s freshly showered, hair gelled, in a white button up short sleeve shirt and the cleanest pair of jeans he owns.

It’s a date-the only thing keeping it from being a date is Pepper’s stubborn mantra of “We’re studying.”

He _knows_ she doesn’t really believe that though because she’d let him drive them into Boston-away from the prying eyes of the MIT gossips on campus-to come into this little café. 

Their previous dates had all been in Boston. 

They are in Boston. 

This is a date. 

She looks at him for a moment, as if she’s not quite sure what to tell him, before saying “Okay” and returning to her work. 

Of course, she doesn’t start singing or humming or even tapping her pencil when she continues reading, blue eyes narrowed as she reads over something she doesn’t understand. 

He finds it incredibly weird to know someone, their ticks, their emotions so well and still not know hardly a single thing about them. 

He doesn’t even know her middle name but he knows she loves her coffee black and her Ramen noodles slightly over cooked and hot chocolate when she’s tired and-he can’t help the smug little grin as he watches her in her cute sundress, the image of casual sophistication and class-that she most _definitely_ has a kink for her hair being pulled.

It’s hard to believe that the lovely girl sitting across from him, all studious and concentrated, is the same one who, just last night, drug him into the bathroom of a loud bar and let him fuck her from behind while she clung to the porcelain sink desperately, sent over the edge when he’d roughly grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled. He had always thought, long before their relationship, that she would have some dirty little kink-the good girls always do-but speculating and seeing her face in the filthy bathroom mirror as her orgasm took her by surprise were two _very_ different things. His-

“Tony, what are you doing?” She sounds amused rather than irritated and he looks up, humming a ‘huh?’ in response. “You’re zoning out.”

“I am,” he agrees, looking for the spot on her neck where he left quite the hickey yesterday-he likes marking her up because he adores the little exasperated wrinkle of her nose when she sees the mess of bruises along her chest and neck in the mirror-and zeroes in on the bit of makeup expertly covering the outline of his teeth. He only sees it because he’s looking for it and that-having these naughty secrets with someone-makes him grin wider as he meets her eyes. 

“Stop, then,” she teases, setting her pencil down to look at him, head tilted slightly in question. “Are you alright?”

“What’re your plans for the summer?” He asks suddenly, not really sure where the thought had come from, even though the question had been on his mind since he realized their final was coming up so soon. 

“What?”

“Summer, you know, that season between spring and-”

“I got that, Tony, why are you asking?”

“I just...I was wondering. It’s probably too soon into... _this_ for us to spend the entire summer together and if you’re doing something for SHIELD again, then-”

“How do you know I did something for SHIELD?” She asks and he snaps his mouth shut, suddenly realizing she had never told him about her summer in South America-JARVIS had. “Tony?”

“I think you-”

“I know I didn’t.”

“Honey,” he begins soothingly, prepared to tell her that he’d practically stalked her with his AI before chickening out and saying with as much seriousness as he can manage, “JARVIS has a crush on you.”

“Yeah, right.” She purses her lips and looks at him disbelievingly. 

“You’re the first girl he ever saw, Pep, I think he’s in love.”

“I think you’re full of shit.”

“Well, do you?”

“Do I…?”

“Have plans this summer?” He steals a piece of lettuce off her plate that’s fallen out of her sandwich because he knows it’ll annoy her and he loves the way her cheeks flush in irritation. It’s not entirely unlike the way her face and chest flare pink right before she comes-sure, annoyance is somewhat subdued but he appreciates this version nonetheless. 

“Yeah, I haven’t decided whether I’m going to South America again or Sierra Leone to build a school. Both have a list of pros and cons a mile long.”

“Let me hear ‘em,” he says, shoving an impolitely large forkful of macaroni in his mouth, glancing up at her when she’s silent, a look of subtle shock on her face. He never knows how to interpret that look-whether it means he was once such an asshole, she can’t believe he just said or did whatever he had, or whether it means Aldrich was such an asshole, she didn’t think Tony would do whatever it is he had just said or did. Either way, it makes a flash of pain twist his heart every time he sees it. “Seriously,” he continues, nodding slightly as he tries to swallow his food. “Let me hear it.”

“I-well, first is safety...Sierra Leone is somewhat safer than Latin America, just because Latin America is a _lot_ of traveling and we don’t exactly go through the best areas.”

“I thought there was a _war_ going on in Sierra Leone.”

“The region we’re building the school in is supposed to be fairly unaffected. Latin America is a mess of drug lords. The trip almost wasn’t approved last year but Phil pulled some strings and got us trucks that nearly doubled as tanks.”

“Why would he do that?” He asks, something like anger flaring up inside him at the thought of her put into unnecessary danger. “If it shouldn’t have been approved-”

“Then thousands of people wouldn’t have been treated, Tony,” she says, looking back at her paper. “I only went there so I could get away for the summer.”

The change in her voice suggests ‘get away for the summer’ means ‘get away from Aldrich’ and he furrows his eyebrows at the idea of her intentionally putting herself in such a dangerous position just to spend some time away from him. 

“Then go to Sierra Leone.”

“I know I should-I just-the school won’t help as many people as the vaccinations will. I mean, the school will help, but that’s just a single, or a few, communities. The other is _hundreds_ of communities.”

“Pep, if you’re worried about your safety, don’t go. Aren’t others going anyway?”

It’s obviously the wrong thing to say because she averts her eyes and shakes her head solemnly, finger nail tracing along the grain in the wood. 

“No, they’re already understaffed.”

“Well, do they need volunteers?” He offers and she jerks her head up to look at him, this time the shock not subtle at all. “What? You think I’d be doing something _important_ this summer?”

“I-no-well, yes, I did,” she stammers. “What’d you do last summer?”

The memory of a chocolate-themed threesome in the presidential suite of the Ritz comes to mind, but he figures that not exactly what she wants to hear. 

“You don’t wanna know. I’m in a stable-ish relationship, those days are over.”

“Stable- _ish_?” She questions, lips twitching slightly as she tries to hide her smile. 

“I’ll call it stable once people know about us,” he says, leaning back in his chair. 

She wants to wait for them to actually come out as a couple; the news of Aldrich and her break up had already stirred enough gossip, she didn’t want to rock the campus with news that she had started dating _Tony Stark_ so soon after. She’d originally said four months was a decent amount of time as if she hadn’t put much thought into it, but he knows she picked four months because it’ll be August by the time that happens-plenty of time to figure _them_ out and plenty of time for people to forget about Aldrich over summer break. 

And besides, there’s something fun about sneaking away for date nights and having to keep their relationship under control in public; Natalie and Rhodes are the only two on the whole campus who know about them-he hadn’t even told Happy.

“I see,” she muses, returning to her papers. 

“Anyway, do you need volunteers?” He asks, wondering if SHIELD even _took_ volunteers. 

“You don’t have to go.”

“I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“That’s a very noble reason to do this, Tony,” she says lightly. 

“That’s not-I mean-I wanna spend the summer with you.”

It came out a little more desperate than he’d initially intended and they leave it hanging between them for a moment. 

“You want to spend nearly three months trekking through-”

“I wanna spend three months with _you_ , babe.”

That shuts her up immediately and he grins and winks, knowing that earned him some _major_ boyfriend brownie points and knowing that he _meant it_ -this wasn’t some cheesy pick up line to get laid. 

“You’re a hopeless romantic,” she says decidingly after a minute and he holds his hands up guiltily. “I’ll talk to Phil and Nat-there’s the cost of-”

“If money’s a problem, I’ll buy the whole damn organization.”

“No, it’s-I don’t know how much they’ve put aside for this trip or what their travel plans-”

“Pepper, I can send everyone on my private jet.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why is that such a bad idea?”

“There’s safety standards we have to meet, and I don’t think the Stark Private Jet Flying Strip Show would qualify as the ‘some form of commercial airliner’ we’re required to fly on.”

“Hey, now, no more strippers on my plane,” he says, wondering how the hell she knows about that before he grins devilishly. “Unless _you_ wanna put on a-”

“ _No_.”

“That’s a shame.”

“I’ll talk to Phil about volunteering and let you know what he says later tomorrow.”

“Ooh, you know what? This’ll be a good cover story for the start of our relationship.” She gives him an odd look and he gives her his best puppy eyes, fake simpering, “I fell in love with you because I saw you _helping others_ and you fell in love with me because you saw that I was _more than a bratty billionaire kid_.”

He bats his eyelashes for extra effectiveness and she rolls her eyes, affectionately saying, “You’re an idiot.”

“You love me.”

“For some godforsaken reason.”

He opens his mouth in a dramatic show of shock and his voice rises in pitch. “Hey-”

“I’m kidding, Tony.”

“Good. Might have to break up with you otherwise.”

“You don’t have the balls,” she scoffs. 

“Honey, I think you’d agree that I have-”

“Maybe _I_ should break up with you.”

“Please don’t,” he instantly pleads, knowing she’s joking but this is just what they do-play back and forth with each other. It’s the infrastructure of their relationship and he’s glad that didn’t change after they slept together. 

“You _are_ an idiot.”

“This is blasphemy.”

“Hmm,” she hums, practically ignoring him as she resumes her reading. “If Phil says you can go, you’re wanting to go on the trip I choose, right?”

“No, I want to have a romantic getaway with _Phil_ ,” he says, cringing over just the sound of his name. 

“He’s going to Sierra Leone, if that makes a difference,” she responds, looking up at him again. “Steve’s going to South America and Nat can’t go on either. Who else from SHIELD do you know?”

“Bruce,” he answers, narrowing his eyes slightly. “ _Steve_ is going on-”

“What is your thing with him?” She asks with a laugh but there’s a certain uneasiness behind her eyes that offsets him. He knows Aldrich had been unfairly jealous, but Tony can’t help not like the fact that Pepper hung out with such a good looking guy-he himself was straight as a board but you don’t have _eyes_ if you said Steve Rogers was ugly-so much. It’s not like he doesn’t trust her-he doesn’t trust _Steve_ , with that toned body and blue eyes and old school charm; he could get anyone he-

“Tony,” Pepper interrupts his thoughts. 

“I just-I’m not jealous,” he tries to assure, knowing that’s not entirely true and she presses her lips together. 

“Tony, _I know_ jealous,” she says lowly. “You have nothing to worry about.”

“I trust you, Pep, Steve’s the-”

“He does _not_ like me.”

“He acts weird around you.”

“We’re friends, he-”

“He likes you, babe, he-”

“I can assure you that he absolutely, one thousand percent, does _not_ ,” she laughs, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. 

“How are you so sure?” He asks skeptically. Guys hit on Pepper all the time-since the news of her breakup, she’s been the talk of quite a few locker room-esque discussions. There are very few _actually_ hot girls at MIT-most are desert queens-and to have a single one on campus was giving a lot of guys hope. 

“I said he’s a good friend, he confides in me about personal things,” she says vaguely. 

“What _kind_ of personal things?” 

It takes her a minute to answer because she’s writing something on the edge of her article and he knows better than to disturb her. 

“You have to swear not to tell anyone.”

“Promise.”

“Tony-” he meets her eyes, the rigid seriousness on her face sobering him up, and she continues sternly, “I’m serious, you have to _swear_ not to tell anyone.”

“I swear that if I tell someone whatever it is you’re about to tell me, I will kill myself immediately.”

Pepper eyes him skeptically for another few seconds before she says, “He’s gay.”

“ _What_?!” He asks immediately, almost giddy-gossip about people relevant to him always makes him excited. 

“Yes. He’s gay.” She takes a sip of her Coke and he watches as her tongue flicks out to get the few droplets stuck on her upper lip. 

“Why hasn’t he come out, then?”

“Too religious,” she shrugs and he watches the curve of her shoulders in the late afternoon sunlight. “He was raised by these…ultra-Christians, they’re practically Amish, it’s a difficult situation.”

“Is that why he acts like he’s from the fucking 1940s?” He asks, that oldies persona Rogers carries around now making sense; if he’d been raised by some God-fearing, Bible-thumping, gay-condemning, still-stuck-a-hundred-years-in-the-past Christians,  _of fucking course_ he’d act like an eighty year old man. 

“No, Tony, that would be called being a gentleman,” she says sweetly.

“I’m a gentleman,” he defends and she laughs-not a fake one for banter, but a _real_ laugh that he’s not entirely sure how to feel about that.

“Sure you are.”

“I’m serious-I hold doors for you. I…” he trails off, unsure what exactly gentlemanly behavior is-thus probably proving that he is not a gentleman. “Do you want me to start bringing you flowers? Because I can start bringing you flowers, Pep, every date-flowers. I never know if that’s a good idea, though, because-”

“No, you don’t have to bring me  _flowers_ ,”she assures, tapping her pencil on the top of her notebook. “I don’t mean that you’re not a good guy, Tony, you’re just not very gentlemanly.”

“ _How_ so?” He asks, fake hurt lacing his words.

“We had sex in a bathroom yesterday, that’s-”

“That was _your_ idea,” he accuses, remembering her tugging him by the collar of his shirt in the poorly lit bar until they found the bathroom. She’d been buzzed and wearing a tight little skirt and ridiculously sexy heels-he absolutely wasn’t going to say no to it. 

“You could’ve stopped me.”

“I’m not _stupid_ ,” he scoffs. As _if_ he’d ever pass up the opportunity to have sex with her-especially rough, hot, quick sex. 

“You’re not a _gentleman_ , either.”

“Fine, Pep, I’m not a gentleman,” he concedes, knowing he really isn’t-his years worth scandalous charades made his argument invalid; he’s said and done downright filthy things to women for ages, he’s definitely no gentleman. Good guy, sure-gentlemanly, God no. “But I am concerned, why aren’t you eating on our date?” He looks pointedly at the half-eaten sandwich on her plate. 

“This isn’t a date,” she says, motioning towards the slew of papers on their table. “This is _studying_.”

He tilts his head at her and begins to say slowly, “Two people...who are dating...are sharing a meal...alone. If that’s not a date, what _is_?”

“If you’d do the work for Grogan, we would actually be on a date,” she says distractedly as she annotates an economics article they’re citing as a source. “ _Or_ we could not be on a date at all; it’s the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday, we could be in one our dorm rooms.”

“Are you bribing me to do my work with sex?” He asks, looking appalled and not liking her realization of this new power she has-he hadn’t even considered her using sex as a weapon. Thank god they started this at the end of the year. Pepper quirks an eyebrow at him in response. “You’re _evil_ woman- _evil_.”

“I’m-”

“Peppy, Peppy!” A little boy-maybe...four, Tony really doesn’t know kids’s ages-shouts from the door into the little café, sprinting across the tile floor as his frazzled mother follows quickly behind. 

Tony gives Pepper a confused glance but she smiles over her shoulder at the boy and gets out of her chair, lifting him up when he crashes into her leg. 

“Hey, buddy,” she laughs when he immediately tries to kiss her cheek and she adjusts him to a comfortable position on her hip. “How’re you doing?”

“Good!” He yells excitedly as the woman who he ran away from approaches them. 

“He saw you through the window,” she explains, giving Pepper an approving once-over. “You look good. Who’s the cutie you’re sitting with?”

 _Why, that would be me_. 

“He’s my-that’s-”

“I’m her boyfriend, Tony,” he materializes by her side. 

The woman gives Pepper a look that clearly asks ‘what happened to Aldrich?’ but she doesn’t voice it as she says, “I’m May-Pepper babysat my nephew last year.”

“You didn’t tell me you were a _nanny_ ,” Tony says mischievously and she rolls her eyes as his hand finds the small of her back. 

“I wasn’t a nanny, I-”

“Nanny McPhee!” The boy exclaims suddenly, looking at Tony curiously.

“Hi,” Tony waves slightly, more than unsure of what to do, or how to communicate, with such a small child. He has zero point zero experience with anyone under the age of, like, sixteen. “What’s your name?”

Pepper tilts the boy in her arms slightly so that he’s facing Tony and he turns suddenly bashful, answering shyly, “Peter.”

“I’m Tony, I’m Pepper’s boyfriend,” he grins over Peter's head at her. “You like Pepper?”

“I _love-_ ” he pronounces it ‘wuv’ and-manliness be damned-it’s pretty fucking cute “-her.”

“Oh, you do? I should be jealous.”

He realizes as soon as he says it that Peter probably doesn't know what jealous means because he asks, “Why?”

“That’s _my_ girl,” he says seriously and Peter giggles against Pepper, wrapping his arms around her neck in a hug. 

“ _My_ girl.”

“No, _my_ girl.”

“ _My_ girl,” Peter squeals, hiding his face in Pepper’s ponytail, laughing a high pitched laugh that could probably cure cancer. 

“She’s my-”

“Husband?” Peter asks, his brown eyes big as they look at Tony. 

“What? No, she’s-”

“Wife?” He tries again. 

“That’d be kind of soon,” Tony answers, partially joking and partially not and he doesn’t miss the look on Pepper’s face. It may have only been a month or so into this thing, but he honestly has no plans to have anyone else in his life, ever-he has Pepper-he’s already won. 

“We’re not _married_ , silly,” she says, tickling Peter’s stomach as he squirms in her arms. He really, _really_ shouldn’t be watching her with Peter-who has brown hair and brown eyes, a signature Stark trait-and imagining what she’d look like with their own kid because they just fucking started this-he has a million and one chances left to ruin it all. Fantasizing about marriage and kids was going to lead him down a path of self-destruction. “We’re _dating_.”

“Like Mommy and Daddy?” Peter asks. 

“Like your Mommy and Daddy before they got married,” Pepper says, sighing at his confused expression.

“Married?” He asks, glancing between Pepper and Tony again.

“No, _dating_ ,” she corrects, giving up when Peter points to Tony and asks, “Husband?”

“Let’s let them get back to their date, bud,” May says, beginning to take Peter from her arms. 

“No, it’s okay,” Pepper assures, handing Peter over nonetheless, adjusting the strap on her dress when it slides down inappropriately. “We’re just studying, we’re not-”

“We’re on a date,” Tony says, nodding slightly as he pulls her into his side now that she’s childless. 

“No we’re not,” she glares at him but he grins back, not at all fazed by her apparent annoyance. 

“We are,” Tony says, looking at May like they know something Pepper doesn’t. “She just hasn’t figured it out yet.”

“Let’s let them figure out whether or not they’re on a date,” May tells Peter, whose bottom lip is quivering, nearly on the verge of crying. 

“Peppy-” he begins, his hand outstretched to touch her. 

“Peter,” she soothes, taking his hand and giving him a smile as his eyes well up with tears. “I’ll see you very soon, okay?”

“See me _now_ ,” he demands, his cute little features furrowing in obvious despair at the thought of leaving Pepper. 

 _Me too, kid, me too_.

“Baby, you have to go with Aunt May.” Pepper wipes a few tears off his face with her thumb and Tony doesn’t miss the maternal care or gentle, easy love in her eyes. 

“I want _Peppy_ ,” Peter says, lips in a pout now. 

“Peter,” Pepper begins, using the same tone she sometimes has with Tony-only considerably softer and less biting-when she’s trying to get through his thick skull and convince him of something. “I’ll see you soon, okay? Please don’t cry or make a scene, bud, it’s ungentlemanly.” Tony smiles to himself at that, watching Pepper reign Peter in, getting the little kid wrapped around her finger. _Note to self: she’s good with kids._ “You have a good time with your Aunt May and I’ll see you _very_ soon, is that good with you?”

Peter nods slowly and Pepper smiles widely at him, pressing a chaste kiss to his forehead as May mouths a ‘thank you’ above him. 

“Bye, Peppy,” he says, still sounding wholeheartedly depressed by their brief encounter, but no longer on the edge of a tantrum. “Bye Tony.”

“Bye,” they answer at the same time, Pepper giving Peter one last kiss on the cheek before she fits into Tony’s side and he doesn’t mess the critical look May gives him. 

“We need to catch up,” May tells Pepper, still looking at Tony like a father eyes up his sixteen year old daughter’s first date.

“We do,” Pepper agrees, nodding slightly as his hand finds her hip, fingers splayed out over the soft cotton of her dress. “I’ll call within the next few days. You have the same number, right?”

“Yeah. It was nice meeting you, Tony,” May smiles at him, a warm smile that suggests he passed the ten second boyfriend inspection she’d just put him through. 

“You too,” he gives her his best lopsided grin-one that women always think he’s cute for-and she receives it well. 

“You guys have fun on your date,” she says, shifting Peter in her arms slightly. 

“It’s not a date,” Pepper immediately argues but Tony seems to have gotten May on his side because she gives her a disbelieving look. 

“Well, have fun _studying_ then, we need to leave before he gets fussy,” she glances down at Peter, who’s watching them talk with big eyes. 

“Yeah-you go, bye Peter,” Pepper smiles at him one last time as May turns and begins to walk away with a final “Bye!”

They stay standing until May and Peter leave the shop, Pepper watching them go and Tony watching Pepper. There’s an easy smile on her face, one that relaxes her features and makes her cheeks round with gentle delight as her eyes crease at the sight of the little boy through the café window and he can’t breathe when she lets her hair out of its ponytail, the strawberry blonde locks falling down to rest on her bare shoulders and she sits down at her spot across from him, glancing up curiously when he continues standing there. 

“Tony-” She begins, picking up her pencil and tapping at the article he was supposed to be reading “-get to work.”

He hums slightly, not moving, stuck in the trance she’d unknowingly put him in. 

“What are you thinking about?” She asks, not even looking at him, already focused on the task in front of her. 

 _I think I’m gonna marry you, Potts_. 

“This is a date,” he finally says, sitting across from her, knowing he’s getting _years_ ahead of himself with these dreams of weddings and kids but unable to stop himself. 

Pepper fucking Potts is his forever and he doesn’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that they found each other so young and fell madly in love so fast. 


End file.
